


Hubris

by taranoire



Series: Points of View [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Abuse, Backstory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Other, POV Second Person, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-07-16 07:54:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7259011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taranoire/pseuds/taranoire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your family is only half-laetan but you decide you are destined for greater things. Securing the patronage of Danarius Tarquin is supposed to be your ticket into the magisterium, but an elf-slave called Leto....complicates things. (Fenris backstory from the perspective of Hadriana.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> -Please heed the warnings. The content they describe may occur in this or future chapters. However, I am taking as much care as possible to avoid describing these scenes in detail (or at all). For example, there will be no rape scenes, only implications and references.  
> -Continuing in the same fashion as Consertae, this piece is written from Hadriana's perspective. Because it's from her perspective, of course, expect lots of cruelty and malicious attitude.  
> -It will have three total parts. Parts two and three are nearly finished.  
> -Part one focuses on Danarius. Part two, Leto. Part three, Fenris.  
> -I stole Danarius' last name from lingering-nomad. Actually a good portion of this fic exists thanks to her help.  
> Enjoy!

You are born scowling. Mater wrinkles her nose, and passes you to her slave–-a frail, half-deaf elf trained as midwife and housekeeper-–and does not take you into her arms again. 

The slave becomes your primary caregiver. She tidies your bedroom, watches as you frolic in the house gardens, chides you when you throw rocks at the groundskeeper. She mends your dresses when you tear them, comes to your bed when you cry out in the night, and sings you dark, mournful lullabies in a language that sleeps. She smells like lavender and earth. Her quick fingers pain her but she is always willing to braid your hair and weave pretty things into it. She knows a bit about medicine, and alchemy, and one of her tonics tastes like honey, sinks deep inside your chest and warms winter colds away. 

You catch her powdering her wrinkled face on more than one occasion, hiding intricate green tattoos.

“ _Vallaslin_ ,” she says when you ask. “My blood, and special ink.”

“Do they hurt?” 

“Not anymore. I cannot even remember if they did.”

You call her Sophia, though she had another name once.

*

When mater holds her parties in the villa overlooking your father’s fragrant vineyards, you hide and watch, unwelcome in the midst of grown women. Masks are fashionable in Qarinus, this summer, and today you make a game of guessing what mask hides which lady. Their bones press at paper-thin flesh, and they vomit in designated urns so that they might continuously eat.

Pater, bored from lack of masculine company, drinks himself stupid on the wine he stores in wooden casks in his private cellar. He disappears with a servant girl not much older than your sisters. 

The ladies laugh at mother--at her pitiable wealth and her collection of ugly daughters--and the party ends on a sour note. She screams, shrill and high-pitched, at the poor kitchen slave whose banquet was not up to par, and beats her with a vintage bottle from the family cellar. 

You creep out of your hiding place. You carefully pick up the broken shards of glass and hold them up to a window, your blue eyes fascinated as they take in the viscosity of drying blood and wine. You can sense the raw power in it, subtle like a heartbeat, but you cannot tap into it. Not yet.

*

On your sixth birthday, you kill your sister’s beloved pet dove with a stone. An accident. As punishment, your mother locks you out with its belly-up corpse, perhaps meaning to teach you a lesson about the frail nature of life. An hour later, with some spite on your agenda, you reanimate the bird with a muttered spell, a pricked finger, and dark intent. 

Its body contorts, barely functioning, as it haphazardly begins to stir, blackened blood dribbling from a crushed beak. Your sisters shriek and sob when they see it. Your hated mother is speechless. 

“I can kill it again, if you prefer,” you say. 

*

Throughout their lives your parents have borne the shame of being  _laetan_ in name alone–their blood is more iron than mana, and when they brought yet another generation of mundane into the world, they despaired at the thought of groveling in the mud like the sleepers. When your magic manifests, the burden of your family’s status shifts to you, and instead of being celebrated, it is treated tentatively.

You are bundled away without ceremony on a cold, misty morning. A slave loads your trunk—filled with sparse personal possessions, a few silk fans and a pretty dress, a bottle of your father’s wine—onto the back of the carriage. You look out the back window as you depart, watching as the vineyards and the dilapidated villa shrink into obscurity. You never return.

*

The Circle of Magi is not a dingy prison but the most prestigious university in the known world. Ancient but well-preserved, it towers above the city, a miracle of stone terraces, archways, elaborate mosaics and gardens for work and for pleasure. Mages from across the continent go to Minrathous to study and pursue their craft. Even southerners, wary and frightened of Tevinter, look upon it in awe.

In the morning you have your breakfast tea in your private apartment overlooking  _palacia_. Then you attend advanced lectures on astronomy, primal magic, and history. In the evenings you spend long hours in the moratorium studying the dead and testing theoretical spells. You eventually go to parties and festivals, mingle with _laetan_ socialites, and explore brief, chaste romances with handsome apprentices that go nowhere. 

Life is quiet, but good, and when you think of home you think of your sisters—fattening, stupid, dull, and waiting for some stinking fishermen to fill them with more useless seed. 

*

The first spirit you become acquainted with is a gentle one called Confidence, who is drawn to your childlike will to survive in a nest of vipers. She appears to you as a pale blue wisp in your dreams, offering sweet encouragement and praise. You enjoy her company, and when she asks to be let inside you, smiling prettily in her silk gown, you accept. Confidence follows you in your waking hours, a subtle whisper in your ear, a shadow in the mirror, a pearl of faith when you cast your spells.

*

The Tevinter sun is hot, hidden behind a curtain of ever-present haze, and you sweat beneath layers of dark blue velvet and paste. You have brushed your hair, curled it and decorated it with an elaborate beaded mesh. Confidence tells you that you are beautiful, a lotus flower among the aging weeds of the Tevinter court. Choke them out.

You are surrounded by the echelons of Minrathous nobility in the sprawling hanging gardens of the Proving Arena, green and white and gold. The wine is plentiful, the air thick with salt, and the elves blissfully silent. Gossamer cloth covers their mouths, a metaphor and a pretty accessory for hidden mutilation. With so many noble-blooded men trading secrets, it would not do well for a little rabbit to scurry off with grains to barter. 

You meet your prospective master with a deep curtsy. 

 “Honored Magister Danarius Tarquin, it is good to finally make your acquaintance. I have heard much about your prowess in the world of academia, and your recognition of my Circle thesis left me speechless, to say the least.” 

It becomes clear Danarius does not recognize you, if his arched brows are any indication, and his conversational partners echo your suspicions as they titter to themselves. It is not politically fashionable to mock a woman for her sex in the modern Tevinter court but nonetheless occurs. That you are so bold in the company of older men is seen as forward, crass.

The magister’s personal attendant, a pretty elf with golden hair, speaks on your behalf. His accent is Antivan. “ _Dominus,_ this is Lady Hadriana of House Eliseus, daughter of Theon Alexus Eliseus, _laetan_ and mage of the Minrathous Circle of Magi.”

There is a pause as Danarius appraises you. “Thank you, my little Hyacinth. I remember now.” He wrinkles his nose. “Yes, to say your thoughts on the nature of soul were merely interesting would be a discredit to your effort. Killing the body, but keeping the spirit held on this side of the Veil—remarkable, if accomplished.”

You are not sure if this is a compliment. “I apologize for naiveté on my part, magister. I merely theorize that any number of procedures could be performed on a damaged body, while the spirit is held in stasis.” 

“Theory is admirable, but the magisterium prides itself on  _results_.” He gives you a pointed look. 

“Lady Hadriana?” one of the other magisters says, his bald head gleaming with oil. He stops a passing elf with a sharp whistle and a snap, helping himself to a goblet of wine. “A little too stately a title, for someone whose family has not borne a mage in several generations.”

“Now, now, Corinius,” your professor says gently, “the girl is talented, one of the brightest in my flock if her paper is anything to show for it. Her grasp of the arcane may be rudimentary, but I believe that with time and instruction she could be a fine magister herself.”

The deep wail of the Proving horn echoes throughout the gardens. The elves disappear with timid, soft-falling steps, pale at the sound, as if they are dogs trained to scamper. You wonder if there are hidden doors behind the foliage. 

“This discussion will have to resume at a later date, I am afraid; I have a deep love of sport and I hate to miss a match. I am glad to have met you, Lady Eliseus,” Danarius says with a polite nod. “I look forward to having you in my classroom.” 

*

The moment they laid eyes on you, then pinned you down, as a child might a butterfly. Lady Hadriana Eliseus, they say, is less a lady and more of a charlatan. They only let her in because her father owns one of the last true Tevinter vineyards, and he pulled a few strings. She herself is an _adept_ string-puller. But if you squeezed her like a grape, only a thimble full of blood would bear the scent of a true magus.

Well, that is what they say.

It is true that you cannot cast to save your life. You try, certainly. You chant, you divine, you summon, you call forth the Fade when it asked of you. But the spirits _laugh_ at you. And worse, there are occasions where they ignore you altogether, preferring to vie for the attentions of lesser mages already training for the paper-pushing of the lower senate.

You do what you can, what you must.

And if that includes being a charlatan _and_ a harlot, well—the whispers were already there. Confidence appears in your silver hand-mirror and tells you to devour them before they realize the flower has thorns and teeth.

*

Your test subject lies dead on the table, released to the Fade after an hour-long ritual of your own making. You cover the mangled specimen with a sheet, and delicately pull your long sleeves further down to conceal a self-inflicted wound. They all know there was blood involved, but they will not want to see it. It would be an admission of weakness. 

The magister meets your eyes. His expression is unclear.

“Your first degree was in physiology,” he says, after the class is dismissed. He bids that you sit down, as he feeds a tropical bird from the palm of his hand. His office is sunny, comfortable, and smells of old books. “What led to this rather mundane interest, Lady Hadriana?”

You clear your throat.

“Magic and medicine are irrevocably linked. Mages study the Fade, the workings of mana and the spirit, and medicine is a plaything for the  _soporati_. One cannot truly be a healer unless they understand both. There are practical applications: a surgeon might eventually perform a brain transplant with the aid of blood magic. A solider could be made indestructible.” 

“It’s a useful idea, but my plans for you are a bit more...ambitious.” The magister smiles warmly as he closes the door to the cage. “What do you know of elves, Lady Eliseus?” 

An odd tangent. You remember your Sophia, still tidying the estate back home and tending to your family even in her dotage. “They frolic in the wilds and worship dead gods. And they mark each other with blood and ink.” 

A match alights in his eye. "The markings are called ‘vallaslin.’ I have studied many things, dangerous and beautiful, but none as intriguing as the ancient elves. The blood in their markings operated as sigils, binding them to the will of their masters. It granted them terrible power: they were arcane tools of the heathen gods, in a time where magic bled into reality as easily as water with wine. Now, it is all oil, but the magic is still  _possible_.” 

“It sounds exhilarating,” you say. It is so far from what the elves are now: waiflings, prostitutes, scratching the dirt and hoarding copper pieces for sawdust-pillowed bread.

“I have a talent for developing enchantments,” he says. “I have acquired a small army of Tranquil from the south, over the years, and together we have experimented. I know lyrium better than I know flesh.” 

You smile. You have your doubts about that. “And what, exactly, could I do to assist you in your efforts? I am no enchanter.”

“But you are a skilled blood-healer,” Danarius says. He gently clasps your hands in his. His skin is unnaturally cold. “I know you are not…powerful in the traditional sense of the word. But if Tevinter was founded on tradition, the empire would never have spread so far. Branding with lyrium would destroy an ordinary life. You have proven this can be avoided.”

He shows you his books: a copy of the ancient treatise where he first gleaned a whisper of this magic. The process involves carving runes into mortal flesh, and then sealing it with blood and lyrium. If successful, the lyrium acts as a secondary vasculature, circulating magic like oxygen. And this is just the physical process: to truly awaken the power in lyrium, the Veil must be sundered—inside of the subject.  

“This would require many lives,” you say in a hush. You quickly calculate. “Dozens. Perhaps a hundred. Tearing open the Veil is no easy task, and a soul will not crawl back into a body that has suffered so much pain.” 

“I am a master enchanter,” Danarius says, and there is a shadow of a threat in his smile. “I _will_ have my living rune.”  

*

The magister’s parties are decadent affairs. He has good taste in food and drink, and procures exotic dishes accented with gold leaf. Perfectly respectable Circle mages fall prey to their most base lusts, when the doors close; they put their mouths beneath fountains of wine, and take liberties with the master’s slaves in barely private, pillowed alcoves.

Danarius lords over it from his perch at the head of the table, drinking from a deep silver goblet crusty with emeralds.

His more beautiful bed-warmers and whores gather at his feet, or in his lap, hanging on his every word and smiling from his attentions. He prefers elves, of both sexes, dresses them in gossamer and glittering dust and hangs fine jewelry from their tapered ears. He acquires them from exotic parties--Seheron, or Dalish tribes that wander too far north--and has a reputation for their unusually good behavior. Blood magic, of course, but fear is an equally powerful tool.

(“Danarius Tarquin has no patience for disobedience or disappointment,” a Circle acquaintance once told you, when you mentioned you were interested in securing his patronage. “He crucified a six-year-old for sticking his tongue out at him.”)

His favorite is the golden-haired youth, Hyacinth, although there are rumors that Hyacinth is falling out of favor; the life of a magister’s concubine can be hard and short.

Danarius inherited his father’s seat on the magisterium, who inherited his father’s before that. A powerful altus mage, he ascended the invisible tiers of Tevinter society quickly, through no shortage of bloodshed and cruelty, as well as appearances. He is married, oddly enough, and has sired three children, but sees them only every summer.

He was allegedly quite handsome in his youth, and damnably charming, though he is gnarled and wasted now from years of abusing dark magics. He takes several tonics to dim the dementia-like effects of lyrium exposure, but the veins in his face are more pronounced every day, and his ears have started growing sharp.

You jealously wonder whether it would be so bad to be pretty Hyacinth, dressed in silk, mindless and only concerned for the next passing day.

*

Living with Danarius and serving as his arch apprentice is like being royalty. Your stipend is quite large, and your accommodations luxurious beyond imagination. You are allowed a modest assembly of slaves to command and the privilege of his underground laboratories. You spend the remainder of your adolescence in these conditions, working closely with lyrium and with flesh in equal parts.

The slaves of the estate know your reputation as a blood healer and come to you for everything from common cold to broken bones. You aren’t gentle with them and you make no secret of your disgust, but they come to appreciate your presence. Danarius does not care either way, though even he sees the benefits of healthy laborers. So long as they can work, he says, he does not mind what you do with them.

You accompany him everywhere—on hunting expeditions for leisure, or to the _ambassadoria_ to bargain. You become the youngest woman to sit in the magisterium, ardently notetaking and recording your master’s words, studying the art of lawmaking and governance. And in return you make sacrifices when you must.

Confidence exists with you in perpetual sisterhood. You feel her changing, growing stronger within you, but instead of shirking in fear you embrace her warmth. Other spirits call out to you, and you tease them with half-promises and idle agreements, but you are as devoted to Confidence as she is to you.

*

Your mother comes for you one evening, dressed as if in mourning, her carriage led by low-bred horses. She dabs at her eyes with a silken handkerchief--the favor of a countryside lord--and then hands you a thick sheet of parchment bearing the seal of the Imperium. 

Your heart sinks as you read. “Can he do this?” 

“He is the Archon,” your mother says. “He can do anything he likes. I petitioned the  _publicanium,_ thinking there had been some clerical mistake, but no. Unless we can prove our devotion to the empire, our status as  _laetan_ will be revoked.” 

“So it says.” 

“For centuries, the Eliseus line has endured pollution--marrying outside of designated blood, and allowing non-mages to intermingle. I wept when I grew out of adolescence without manifesting. You were our one hope.” 

“I am Magister Tarquin’s apprentice,” you say, wishing she would recognize the accomplishment for what it is. “When he succeeds, all of Tevinter will know our name. He is a master enchanter, _mater_ ; what he does with lyrium would astound nations if it were public knowledge. It is a living thing, a changing thing, and he shapes it to his very will.”

She gives a mirthless laugh. “It sounds to me as if the soldier he creates will have the better end of the bargain. Perhaps it would be better if it was you he branded. Have you considered _that_?”  

“I will not sell myself into slavery for your sake, or anyone’s,” you say firmly.

You look away, out the carriage window, at the slaves working in the estate gardens. The sea churns just beyond the foliage at the edge of Danarius’ walled estate, a comforting violet in color. You wish you had the audacity to flee the carriage and let the waves take you. 

*

For a time, you travel with the magister across Tevinter, hoping that life outside of Minrathous will clear your head as you buy and recruit potential candidates or fodder for your hypotheses.  Most tributes are slaves, though there are some volunteers–starving individuals looking to feed their families, or mere opportunists, mundane lesser children like you. They are all sworn to Danarius’ house and sign away their freedom in exchange for a chance at glory. You pretend to shed a tear for their sacrifice, when it pleases you.

It is hot, dreary work. You can never shake all of the sand from your hair, and in some towns, there is little in the way of luxury. You grin and bear the lack of hot water, private bathhouses, or fine-grained bread. Even Hyacinth falls ill, bedridden with fever, until Danarius grows tired of his fatigue and beats him within an inch of his life.

“You are a slave, and I expect that you act like it,” Danarius snaps at him, handing him a handkerchief to press to a bleeding lip. “Go make yourself presentable.”

At night you and your master work by candlelight, excitedly discussing the ritual. There have been times where you were both drunk on wine and intellectual conversation, where you leaned in a little and he leaned back. When there were no slaves to warm his bed and no high-class brothels within fifty miles. But it is all very professional, and never spoken of. 

Hadriana, magister’s pet, the apprentices say. Hadriana, can’t cast a spell to save her life, but will fuck her way uphill.

*

You rap lightly on the door of the master wing, sequestered in the highest tower of the Tarquin palace--a grand, multi-room apartment overlooking the gardens and a hint of cerulean shoreline. The magister invites you inside but is…preoccupied. You clear your throat politely and avert your eyes.

“Your petition to host a tournament has finally been approved,” you say. “A mere formality, of course, but the Archon himself is particularly looking forward to it, according to his letters. He will supply a dozen elven warriors from his own personal guard to compete, and has also arranged a modest tax to help cover expenses.”  

“Excellent,” Danarius says. “Respond at once and tell him that I look forward to seeing them perform.”

Hyacinth is curled against him like a basking kitten, his master’s fingers running through his golden hair. He murmurs something you cannot hear, and Danarius laughs.

“Little flower, you are not fit for the arena,” he says with a truly gentle smile. “You have never even lifted a sword.”

“Mm, but imagine, _dominus,_ how pretty I would look marked with lyrium,” Hyacinth says, perhaps only half-joking. Even though the intimacy and his status as his master’s favored is quite apparent to anyone with eyes, Hyacinth—like you--must sense that his time is running out. “Why bother with the tournament when I am perfectly able and willing?”

Danarius chuckles, though you see the darkness cloud his gaze before Hyacinth does. He wraps his hand around Hyacinth’s throat, absently grazing his pulse with his thumb. The elf goes still. “You can scarcely stand the pain when I fuck you,” he whispers, squeezing. “What makes you think I would waste lyrium on a mediocre whore’s flesh?”  

*

A crowd roars in the Grand Proving Arena, thousands of souls crying out for blood on a hot summer morning. The scent of roasted meat and herbs wafts from open tables. Slaves lead chained druffalo to beat down the dust. The masses writhe like insects, loud and frenzied, while the _laetan_ and the _altus_ classes sit sequestered in private, perfumed terraces.

The Tarquin sigil is proudly displayed: two serpents--one gold, one black--swallowing each other against a backdrop of rich green. Danarius’ house motto is ‘ _na via lerno victoria_ ’—‘only the living know victory.’ An appropriate reminder considering that those who die today will never receive Danarius’ generous gift.

As the host and sponsor of the tournament, your patron delivers a speech to the assembled.

“Honored guests,” Danarius begins. “As you may have heard, gossip being a cherished Tevinter sport”--he smiles knowingly as the crowd titters--”I have recently undertaken an ambitious quest to recreate a legacy of Arlathan. Conquered, yes, by the honorable ancients before us, but intriguing in its mysteries. And I am proud to say I have divined one of those mysteries: the power to create a warrior to breach the Fade itself.” 

They deafen like a thousand hives. 

“All I lack now,” Danarius says, “is a candidate. A warrior of resolve, dignity, and grace, worthy of this power. Today is the first of many trials, a preliminary war to weed out the weak and the festering.  Look upon the arena and its bloodshed with awe, with terror, because you will be watching history unfold. ” 

For the opening ceremony a handful of slaves, chained together and covered in mud and leaves, are brought out into the glaring sunlight and onto a decorated platform. A beastly man, naked but for the iron dragon’s skull covering his head, dances around them. He whips them, pours boiling oil on them, to the delight of the  _soporati._ He tips oil down the mouth of the mask, and then takes up a torch. 

 

“ _In honorem Andraste!”_

He breathes liquid fire, engulfing the slaves entirely. You cannot hear their screams over the crowd, but can see them frantically writhing in the flames. Their deaths and the sacrifice of their blood charges a sigil carved into the walls and earth of the arena, branding the coliseum with the glow of lyrium. Fanfare exalts the eruption of light.

“So it begins,” Danarius whispers to himself.

Slaves, prisoners, and gladiators are pitted against each other in carefully deliberated matches. Some are Danarius’ property, and others have been volunteered by their masters or of their own volition. Even with the promise of death there is a certain honor in participating.

An elf kills another by cutting off her head. A man beats a woman to gore before the horn sounds. Wolves are let loose in one round, and this quickly turns into a massacre: within minutes, both competitors have been disemboweled alive. But Danarius does not seem displeased. He watches elf-slaves drag the carcasses to the side while he chews dark red meat.

*

“How long have you been at court, Lady Eliseus?” Hyacinth asks with a warm smile, his arm entangled in yours as you walk in the Circle gardens. He nods politely at the servants, wary of eavesdroppers and spies.

“I have been your master’s apprentice for a year, now,” you say.

“Indeed,” he says. He stops and turns to you. There’s an air of hesitation, but you know it is a ruse. His Antivan accent is spiked with threat. “I could not help but notice that you are growing close to Magister Tarquin. I thought it would be prudent to tell you to be wary. He prefers _elves, domina,_ and you cannot satisfy him.”

“I will keep that in mind,” you say, and attempt to step past him. He blocks your path but does not touch you.

“Let me be clearer,” he warns. “I have a very strong relationship with the magister. I do not take kindly to those who would usurp that position. Just a year ago, an elf who made advances was crucified when I accused him of striking me.”

“You have nothing to fear from me, little flower,” you say, sweet and careful. “I only wonder what will happen to you after the magister finds his lyrium ghost.”

*

Several elves are led into the arena, blindfolded and dressed in scraps and in chains, cowering like rabbits in a den of wolves. Then, they are left there, vulnerable, alone in the dark with the roar of the crowd their only indication of danger. A _praefector_ announces that these are the lowest of the low: slaves who dishonored their masters.

One boy catches your eye. He is the smallest, undoubtedly the weakest, and yet is completely still as if he does not know fear.

Danarius smiles, and helps himself to a bowl of fruit.

The gate opens: a drake, dark-scaled and feral, captured in the wilds. Perhaps it is not the most formidable foe to an experienced hunting party, but to a handful of incapacitated elves? You barely have time to muse over this before the horn blares out like a death cry.

And suddenly—

The chains fall to the ground as if a spell has been cast. The elves rip off their blindfolds and run for the corpses that have been left to rot. The drake screeches at the sky, circling them, confused at the prospect of having to chase down its prey, bright orange eyes glaring in harsh sunlight. It flaps its great wings, churning dust.

“S _tare insieme! Esegui e moriamo!“_ the smallest elf cries in vulgar Tevene.

“We must stop this,” you say. “These elves were sentenced to death—“

Danarius holds up a hand to silence you.

The elves have gathered behind the child as if he might protect them from the claws, teeth, and fire of the drake. Some have found weapons: a dagger, a mace, an axe. They hold them as if they have never done so before, clumsy and heavy.  

The drake hisses, and then charges, screaming fire. The elves disperse, and then regroup, attacking the drake from all directions with whatever they think will hurt it the most. The small elf commands them: the tendons at its lower legs. The eyes. A knife slipped beneath the scales. Do not go near its mouth.

One of them is not very good at obeying orders. She slips—you think it is a she—and falls to the ground. The crowd is pleased when the drake tears her apart with its teeth, amidst her terrified brethren, who fight with a renewed vigor, and a more dire need to survive. The drake has no time to feast when there are a half-dozen gnats biting its wings.

Then the small one cuts its throat, crying out as he drags his knife through muscle, sinew, and bone.

The drake shudders, screeches. It bucks the other elves off itself, trying in futility to claw at its own throat as if that might stop the bleeding. It falls to the ground and continues to writhe, crying out, breathing heavily as it draws its last; with one final cry, the drake goes still.

*

The overseer leads you to where the slaves are kept in the damp and the dark like animals. The stench is unimaginable, like walking into a hog pen. They die filthy in blood, shit, and vomit. Spirits haunt the darkest spaces, shadowed wraiths humming in the corners. It is no wonder that so many warriors go mad here. 

The elf in question sits beneath a high window, staring at the straw-covered floor, shackled to the wall with heavy chains. Your first thought is that he is beautiful....disgustingly so, with his dark brown hair and delicate elven bones. He has the sort of idyllic face that a sculptor might fashion, classical nose and full-bowed lips--limpid green eyes.

“Slave, you are in the presence of a magister. Present yourself,” the overseer hisses. 

The elf hesitates, gaze flitting between you and your master. He stands. The shackles clink. 

Danarius examines him from a distance. You hear his breath catch in his throat. “Hadriana, qualify him.”

You nod your head and go to the elf, who flinches as if he has been slapped. The Provings have not treated him kindly. You ignore his discomfort and grab his chin, tilting his head to the left, and then to the right. You force your fingers into his mouth and count his white teeth. You twist his pretty hair around your finger to test its durability. You pinch his muscles to gauge his strength. You ignore the murderous little whisper in your head.

A slave is no threat to you.

“For what crime was he sentenced?” you ask. 

“Destruction of his master’s property, as I hear it. He killed another slave. As a favor to the mother, the master allowed him to choose his death.” 

“He is spirited, then, as well as resilient,” Danarius observes. He circles around him, taking in every detail as if he is mere livestock.

“No one anticipated he would survive so long,” the slave master says. "But he is clever. He has taken down men three times his size through evasion and wit. Frankly, I would be glad to get rid of him--it does me no good to have a fork-tongued  _scortillum_ crippling my stock. I intended to sell him to a whorehouse, perhaps castrate him, if he survived today.” 

Danarius takes Leto’s face into his hands. “You fight well, little one.”

“I am pleased to have done so, your eminence.”

“He speaks like a highborn,” you scoff.

“Fitting, considering our ambitions,” Danarius says. “I do not want a common soldier. I want a prize. Tell me, _praefector;_ if Leto remains in the ownership of the public trust and this arena, will he be put to death?”

The overseer swallows, unsure if there is a correct answer to the question. “That is the rule of the law, but as I said, I had planned to sell him.”

“Sell him to me,” Danarius says. “His defiance of death should be interesting to watch, at the very least.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Fenris, there was Leto.

A  _quaestor_ walks alongside you, taking detailed inventory of Magister Tarquin’s acquisitions for financial considerations. They stand naked in the bleaching heat of the sun, a long line of brown bodies on trembling legs. Leto is the smallest, and he catches your eye as you walk past him, quiet but dignified, carrying himself like a noble lord’s son and not a slave. He must know his days are numbered.  

Turn and face the wall, they are told; some refuse, mostly those who voluntarily entered slavery, and still have some scrap of pride. You laugh, a cold bark of a sound, and then snap your fingers. Anyone who denies the command a second time is whipped until they are weeping in the congealing sand of the master’s private gladiatorial yard. 

“You signed your freedom away, churls,” you say. “From this moment forward, you are the property of House Tarquin. You will fight, bleed, and die for your master, if needed. I suggest that you embrace it. Forget your titles. Forget your families. Forget your rank, your class, your sense of personhood.” 

You descend down the line with the  _quaestor_ , and occasionally thin it by pulling one aside. The malnourished, the weak, and the sick–those who were damaged on the road or in the arena–will be quietly shackled and used as  _sacrificia._ They are bound and escorted to more modest dwellings.

“Leto,” the  _quaestor_ says, reading off of his papers in a bored tone. “’Purchased for two hundred imperials from the public trust. Elven male. Fourteen years old. Pardoned from death by Magister Tarquin.’ It has all been certified. Mark him.” 

Two slaves hold Leto against the wall, pull back his brown hair, and pierce the tapered tip of his right ear with Magister Tarquin’s tag. The boy does not flinch, even as blood dribbles down his neck. 

*

“…Gereon, even if the _soporati_ were capable of appreciating academics, do you really think it’s wise to experiment now?” Danarius chides in the midst of the senate. “This is a meritocracy, not a charity. If the peasants want to participate in higher education they are welcome to invest in their own schools. The magisterium has more vital issues to address.”

“Ah, such as the endless Qunari war, or your vanity project in the arena?” Magister Alexius asks, disgruntled. “What merit does that yield?  It’s an extravagantly wasteful use of taxpayers’ coin, even for you.”

You laugh.

Magister Alexius turns to you. “Is something funny, Lady Eliseus?”

“Pardon me, your eminence,” you say. “I would have thought you were more sympathetic towards my patron’s scholarly pursuits, especially after how often you have been discredited and disgraced for your…” You wave a hand absently. “…more fanciful ideas.”

The hall echoes with the titters of various senators. Danarius looks pleased. Magister Alexius has become somewhat infamous among his cohorts for his hypotheses on a school of magic he invented– _tempore magicis._ The foundation is shaky and the Circle has allotted a sparse research budget, yet you know in your heart that if Alexius succeeds, your master’s Lyrium Ghost will appear a trifle in comparison.

“Aren’t _you soporati,_ Lady Hadriana?” Magister Alexius says. “I don’t believe I have ever seen you so much as cast a spell.”

“Don’t be a fool,” you say, coldly, though you feel your face flush in shame. You call upon Confidence, and hold up your hand, staring straight at the magister as pale spirit energy envelops your fingers. “My blood is as pure as yours.”

He smiles, and nods. “We shall see.”

*

New tributes endure preliminary rounds, pitted against one another in groups of eight. As is custom, the tributes are allowed to say a few words before the start of each match, should they fall in battle. Although Danarius has not yet invoked the blood price, and matches may end with mere submission rather than fatality, it is always a possibility.

This allows an opportunity for tributes to posture, gain admirers, and incite the exchange of coin.

Dressed in matching tunics and leathers, the tributes come in all shades, shapes, dimensions, and backgrounds. Some are obvious throwaways: rabbits in a den of lions, inexperienced laborers with blunt-edged heirloom weapons and graying hair. Some have trained for the arena their entire lives in gladiatorial schools. Muscular, dusted, with closely-shaved heads, they grin at the assembled throng and stand proud among their future victims. Others are more difficult to pin down.

They say much the same thing. “I fight for the honor of Magister Tarquin.” “I fight for the glory of battle and blood on my steel.” “I fight for the spoils of victory—gold, wet cunts, and casks of wine!” Danarius nods after each declaration, chuckling darkly when one says something amusing. You can tell, familiar as you are with Danarius’ whims, that none of the candidates interest him much. His eyes trace the lines of their bodies and come away disappointed.

Beside him, standing veiled and pretty as a sunflower, is Hyacinth. He holds a jug of spirits and dutifully fills his master’s goblet when it goes empty. Occasionally, he whispers to him, providing the _quaestors’_ estimates of gambling sums.

Then, it is Leto’s turn.

Some recognize him as the elf that disrupted the execution of slaves only a week before, murmuring like a hive of bees. Even from a distance he’s difficult to miss, striking in appearance and in stature.

The _praefector_ goes to him.

“What is your name, boy?”

“Leto,” he says, and a shudder of excitement stirs the crowd. It’s an unfortunate moniker, or an omen of good performance, you hear some of them enthuse. Leto is unperturbed by the gazes of thousands, his eyes directly in line with your master’s. 

“Why are you here, Leto?” The _praefector_ asks.

“His eminence Magister Tarquin pardoned me.  I was sentenced to die here, and I did not. He purchased me on the condition that I would participate in his tournament. I had no choice in the matter.”

“I’m sure we all agree that it was an impressive feat. What manner of thought drove you to thwart the law and kill the drake?”

“Survival,” Leto says. “I have committed no crime by obeying the instinct to live. Perhaps you should train your beasts to be better executioners.”

The _praefector_ moistens his lips in embarrassment as the crowd jeers. “One last question, little _lepus._ If you continue to endure, to obey this instinct to live, what great prize would you ask of Magister Tarquin?”

Leto utters but one word: “Freedom.”

*

When the horn resounds, seven of the eight warriors immediately close in, brutally clanging weapons and using any manner of leverage at their disposal. Leto remains where he is, circling the fray from a distance, unnoticed in their desperate need to prove themselves.

“What is he doing?” you whisper furiously.

“Cheating,” Hyacinth agrees.

It isn’t long before blood is shed. One of the career gladiators is a berserker, hefting an enormous axe and cleaving it through limbs without second thought. You hear a desperate, wretched cry for mercy, followed by the crack of metal through a femur–screeching. One tribute lays either unconscious or dead, blood pooling sticky around him. Others stumble to the ground and toss their weapons aside, spitting blood and broken teeth out of their mouths.

It is at this moment that the two remaining tributes notice Leto, observing them as if they are animals in a cage.

The ax-wielder lunges at him, swinging to break his skull, but Leto is smaller and faster than an enormous, fully grown human man and darts out of the way. The other tribute—wielding a mace and a heavy, damaged shield—attacks the axe-wielder from behind, taking advantage of a brief moment of vulnerability as his momentum pulls him forward.

Leto unsheathes his daggers and crouches, suddenly dangerous. Barefoot in the sand, sweat-slick hair falling out of its band, he takes calculated steps. Unconsciously, he and the tribute with the mace become temporary allies, identifying the career gladiator as a greater threat. They attack the ax-wielder from two angles, using his slow weapon against him.

It’s a quick fight. When the ax-wielder is distracted, hammering away at his opponent’s thick shield, Leto slices the tendons in his legs, causing him to collapse under his own weight. He drops his axe and cries  out in pain and frustration, hurling foul curses and threats at Leto, staunching the blood flow with his own two hands.  There’s a roar of disappointment from the crowd; many had made hefty gambles on his behalf.

The man with the mace swings it at Leto’s face, but the elf raises his two blades and barely catches it, sending it away with a loud clink of metal. As the man stumbles, trying to regain his stance, Leto throws one of his daggers and hits him clean in the side. He hoarsely gasps and drops his weapons, clutching the handle of the dagger to keep himself from bleeding out.

A single drum beat ends the match. The crowd is unusually quiet.

Then Danarius gets to his feet, and claps.

*

Leto’s performance sparks excited discussions about his origins, his skill and his lineage. For at least a week, it’s all anyone important can talk about, and it irks you. Rumors begin, as they are wont to do. They dream up impossible fantasies: Leto is a famous courtesan, they say, hired for his theatrical skill, and the battle in the arena was a clever plot to fill seats. Leto is the illegitimate son of a noble lord and his elven maid–from Nevarra. Leto is not really an elf at all, others allege.

There are some grains of truth that quickly spread among arena patrons, delighted as they are. He was born a slave in Seheron fourteen years ago, and has a twin sister, name unknown. He learned to scrap fight at the large estate of his former master. He speaks both forms of Tevene and knows a great deal of the trade tongue, and seems unusually well-educated.

Beyond that, Leto is a shadow, a fascinating specimen shrouded in mystery. Coupled with his beauty, the enigmatic Leto is a romantic figure to the Tevinter court, all the more because his life hangs precariously by a thread.

*

Danarius’ favor for Leto becomes well-known. How could it not? He tosses gold coins at the boy, in the arena, and manipulates the matches so that he has better opportunities to survive. He sends anonymous “gifts”—silver daggers with snake-shaped hilts—and corners him in conversation, showering him with praise and warm wishes while Hyacinth looks on in jealousy. To his credit, Leto responds to his interest with lukewarm appreciation, kneeling and kissing his ring because he _must,_ tonelessly delivering a rehearsed platitude because he _must._

“I don’t like him,” the Antivan-born slave says to you, in confidence. “He’s a viper.”

“Your master is fond of him,” you say. “Let him entertain this curiosity. For now.”

*

Over the course of the tournament, they begin to call him “Leto the Enduring,” asking for nothing, never wavering, fighting for the mere satisfaction of another sunrise and the hope that, one day, he might return home. He does not take lives: perhaps in atonement for the crime that put him here, he debilitates and stuns and draws blood, but kills none.

He carves a path through the tournament with little more than sharp daggers, intuition and a passion for the dance.

*

Near the beginning of the end, Danarius hosts a feast for his tributes that have survived thus far. He sends them into the better parts of Minrathous for a day of pleasure, revelry, and sin, rewarding their feats with bathhouses full of supple elven whores and incense and overflowing wine. They are groomed and dressed and paraded through the streets on drakolisks while young women walk behind them, tossing rose petals and trinkets. They become red-faced, drunk, and rowdy, feeding on the energy of their admirers—the _soporati_ women that bear their breasts, the overzealous male gamblers spritzing them with spirits.

The procession ends at Danarius’ estate, which has been transformed into a palace of carnal delights. The scent of magic cloys the air, the work of talented pyromancers and enchanters. Every surface gleams and glitters with light and colored wisps. Bound Desire demons prowl the courtyard, offering sweet, dangerous smiles and entertaining words. The greater eating halls overflow with food and drink. Elven slaves inhabit pillowed alcoves, some of them their master’s favorites; that he allows others to partake is a show of status indeed.

Each tribute is announced and escorted into the estate by a procession of slaves. The color and breed of their drakolisks, their decorative armor and even the styling of their hair have been selected according to their feats in battle and their origin. A _quaestor_ lists their accomplishments with believable enthusiasm—maimings, kills, decapitations, and so forth.

It is all very dull. You are not yet drunk enough to enjoy this.

“Our last tribute, ladies and gentlemen of the court, is a special treat,” the _quaestor_ says. “To say he shocked us with his unconventional debut is an understatement. An elf-slave, and a criminal, he rose from the ashes to become one of the most identifiable candidates in the tournament. You know him as Leto the Enduring.”

Leto arrives not on a drakolisk, but on the bare back of a  white halla muzzled with silver chains. A handslave assists him as a hush of appreciation falls over the crowd. Here he is, the little rabbit, prettier than a whore and rabid like a wolfling, his hair braided down his back and his eyes cold fire. He is dressed in the classical style of Arlathan, bare feet and exotic leather armor and a white cloak that trails the ground.

People applaud but he looks past them—looks at you and the magister beside you.

When they reach the end of the stone walkway, Leto and his entourage of elven slaves bow low to the ground, waiting for Magister Tarquin to relieve them. The magister stands, a silhouette of darkness before the light inside of his palacial estate, his staff firm in his hand with the blade pointed towards the twin moons of the sky, and grins.

*

You fuck one of the tributes—some wall of a man from Solus—against a wall in one of the alcoves. After replacing your clothes and returning to the feast for a glass of wine and refreshments, you spy the master of the house speaking with none other than Magister Corinius in a more private lounging corner.

“—wanted to thank you for the invitation, but she was feeling rather ill,” Corinius says. “She means no insult by it.”

“A shame,” Danarius says with a smile. “Your wife is a lovely woman, Corinius; quite lovelier than mine, by far. Send her my regards, will you?”

“Of course, my friend, she will be delighted to know you are thinking of her. How is dear Eleanor?”

Danarius chuckles, and takes a hearty sip of wine. “I have not seen my wife in perhaps four months. She’s quite content where she is—especially now that the children are grown and participating in their own affairs. She has the manor and vineyard all to herself, and her choice in suitors that come to her door. It’s a liberating arrangement for both of us.”

“I can tell,” Corinius says, nodding pointedly at the decadent arrangement of decorated bodies around them. “But do you never want to settle down? Your appetite has not changed in the thirty five years I’ve known you.”

“Perhaps I have not been satisfied yet,” Danarius says. “Perhaps it is none of your business.”

He is watching Leto. The elf sits alone away from the crowd, politely declining conversation and solicitation. No wine has touched his lips, no hand has spoiled him. He talks quietly to the slaves but otherwise observes the feast.

“That one guards his chastity well,” Corinius says, and then chuckles. “For whatever good it will do.”

*

The night is thick with the scent of blood and fire. The arena’s sand has gone neglected, and is slippery with gore and broken bodies. Danarius rolls a small, pretty shard of glass between his fingers.

_“Sangue! Sangue! Sangue!”_

_“Macellare il coniglio!”_

Battle-hardened Marias strikes before the horn sounds, taking Leto by surprise–he never expected an opponent to fight unfairly. Nonetheless, he dodges the blow, rolling filthy in the dust. He fights as he has always done, evading and snapping at Marias’ heel, hesitant to slaughter. But Marias takes no pity on Leto. 

He swings at his head. He clenches his hair in his fist and throws him to the ground. He wraps his hands around his throat, and tries to strangle him there in the dust. The boy struggles, arching his back, kicking and biting and scrabbling at the hands around his neck.  He begins to understand that this will be a victory or the end of his life. 

He finds a stray dagger half-buried in the dirt, blade crimson in the setting sun. He cries out, mad with the instinct to survive, and slams his dagger deep in Marias’ belly. Once. Twice. Three times. Blood spurts from Marias’ mouth, and he stumbles to his knees. 

Danarius squeezes the jagged blade of glass. Blood drips out from between his fingers. You feel the mana in the air change like a ripple in a pond.

Leto squeezes his eyes shut, and opens them again. He goes to Marias. He slashes his throat with so much force that Marias’ head falls back on his shoulders, held firm by a scrap of sinew. Blood washes over Leto’s feet.

*

You find your master in his alchemy laboratory, bottles of wine strewn about, and papers haphazardly strewn. He is sketching the markings again–always changing his mind on how they should look, and what kind of message they should convey. 

“Come here,” he says to you. “I want your opinion.” 

You look over his shoulder. An elven form, with graceful white lines that follow the body’s natural energy points. The work is clearly inspired by the vallaslin you studied early in the project, reminiscent of the elven god June. But this is a perversion of it, imagery of worship for the body and not divinity. It’s extremely beautiful, breathtaking, even–but you cannot help but notice that the elf is unmistakably Leto. 

*

The final match occurs in near-darkness. Sacrifices litter the field, and shades slither out of the corpses like death personified. The remaining tributes are given clear instructions: survive. Find your prey. Kill them. Only one can exit alive tonight.

The audience sees only flashes of battle. Most of the fun comes from listening. When the mage overseeing the match feels a life end, that part of the arena is lit, revealing the massacre that has taken place in shadow. In one instance, the tribute fell prey not to his opponents, but to the shades—he is unidentifiable, a mess of gore and bones.

Almost as soon as it begins, it is over. To no one’s great surprise, Leto emerges in the light, severely wounded and drenched in blood but alive. The arena erupts into applause. People at all levels of society get to their feet for him, and cry out his name. He collapses to his knees, his victory finally allowing him to show his pain, his sorrow, his vulnerability. He sobs in the blood-spattered soil.

Healing mages start to descend upon the field, ready to whisk Leto away to be prepared for the victory ceremony. But Danarius has other plans.

He stands and holds his hands in the air. He waits for the full attention of the people. They grant it, muttering uneasily.

“A good show, to be sure,” Danarius says. “Leto the Enduring has more than proven himself a worthy candidate for my undertaking. He is willful, strong, and graceful, like the wild halla itself. I have no doubt of his skill. Do you agree?”

The crowd roars its affirmation. They chant his name like a battle cry. In the pit, still bleeding out and pale from it, Leto does nothing.

“But there are loose ends,” Danarius says. “You may remember that Leto owes me a life debt. A blood price, that he has not yet paid. Tonight, to seal our transaction, and with so many thousands as witness, Leto will show his loyalty to me and to the great Tevinter imperium through the conciliation of this debt. It’s only fair.”

You clap your hands, a signal to begin. Heat and light flare at the outer edges of the arena, as bright as daylight, fire encircling the great pit. This reveals not only the mess of corpses and the remnants of shades in the sand, but a dozen posts where living victims have been crucified. The crowd seems torn between enthusiasm and horror, loud and raucous, applause intermingling confused murmurs.

They are all elves. Recognition and despair take all the life from Leto; he retches and vomits where he is coiled.

“Behold,” Danarius says, unperturbed, pointing the blade of his staff at the pit below. “The slaves Leto the Enduring defended in the arena, one fateful day, months ago. Just as he robbed his master of a slave when he struck a blade in his throat, he robbed the Tevinter Imperium of justice when he led these vermin into battle. Well, Leto; as you see, justice can be delayed, but never for long.”

The crowd’s confusion turns to dramatic concern for their Leto. He, too, should be mounted on a cross for his crimes against the Imperium. Some vindictively say as much. Others plead loudly with Danarius, crying out for mercy.

“Yes,” Danarius says, “Leto owes all of you thirteen lives.” He smiles. “Twelve die for you now.”

He raises his staff, and the circle of fire erupts, overwhelming the edge of the arena where the condemned are lashed to posts. Without warning it engulfs them, and screams tear out from a dozen victims, struggling wildly against the leather lashings.

“Watch, Leto,” Danarius says, “and know that this could have been quick and relatively painless for them.”

It takes less than a minute for them to die, but it feels like eternity. Leto tries to go to them, helpless though he might be–his screams soundless in the din of flames and terror. Two Templars standing watch hold him down and away until, as the slaves go silent and dead, Leto collapses in quiet stillness. Danarius extinguishes the flames, revealing charred, acrid corpses.

“I take no pleasure in this, Leto,” Danarius says, apathetic. “Your blood price is this: you are mine, from your next breath until your last breath. You will serve me faithfully until death releases you. In exchange, I will stay true to my word, and grant your family the freedom you will never know.”

*

In a mostly empty dining room, Danarius watches him with delight in his eyes as, with dried blood still caked between his fingers, he gorges on rich bread, legumes, roasted birds, and pastries dripping in wine-must syrup. Hyacinth wrinkles his nose in disgust, and looks away.

“You will be happy here, for a time,” Danarius says as a slave fills his goblet. “I will not keep you in the compound—you are too valuable, too precious, for that. Rather, I hope that you will consider yourself a guest. You will have servants, and comfort, and may even have some freedom of movement, within reason.”

“But I am yours now,” Leto says. His voice is hard.

“Yes,” Danarius says. “You are mine.”

*

Leto’s mother is as beautiful as he: long hair the color of jungle earth, strong features, full lips, and hooded green eyes that seem to contain the secrets of the known world. She is young, but has a crooked back and frail hands from a life of hard labor. When she signs the document that will release her from slavery, she weeps, and thanks you in her best higher Tevene. The sister, Varania, is less receptive. 

“My brother is still a slave?” she asks.

You gather together the papers and tie them neatly with twine. “He is the property of Magister Tarquin, perpetually. The bargain dictated that he would serve the magister on the condition of your purchase and release.” 

“Beg your pardon,  _domina,_ but does the magister treat his slaves kindly?” Iolanda asks. 

You want to laugh at such a question.

 “Leto will be the most well-kept slave in all of Thedas,” you say, handing her the papers, and a small satchel of gold. Her hands shake. “He will have access to luxuries most could not ever dream of, and as the cherished consort of a magister, no harm will come to him.”

“From one woman to another, would you promise that you will watch over my child?” she asks, eyes shining. 

“I fail to see how that benefits me,” you say, and send them on their way. 

*

They all want to see him.

For weeks there is scarcely any time to prepare for the ritual simply because Minrathous is fascinated with the elf Danarius Tarquin has found. They romanticize it, as Tevinters are wont to do. It’s like a fairytale: a slave who came from nothing, and now has half the world scrambling for a mere glimpse of him. They gather at the Tarquin gates and send copious amounts of letters—some from artists requesting to do portraits, and some bids for his virginity.

They cannot have him, of course. So you write letters explaining the fact. The elf is under the protection of Magister Tarquin, and is particularly vulnerable during these weeks of preparation; no, his body is not for sale, for any price; he cannot be seen, cannot be met with, cannot be spoiled by the influence of the court.

Magister Corinius is incessant, however. He contributed a great deal of coin and slaves to Danarius’ “little distraction,” as he calls it in his letters, and he wants his share of the spoils. You delicately remind him that he is Danarius’ most treasured friend, and if the magister knew his friend coveted his dearest possession, it would cause…friction.  

*

Danarius hires four imperial templars to watch over Leto, and assigns a retainer of lower slaves to make him comfortable. 

A renowned tutor educates Leto in history, politics, language, and faith. Leto can soon recite literary epics and succinctly describe the geography of Thedas. He excels at chess and playing the lyre, and even understands some degree of magical theory. He has a gift for tongues. Danarius enjoys listening to him recite poetry from memory.

He dotes on him with every material thing Leto could ever think to want. A furnished wing with elaborate handwoven tapestries, a private bath with running heated water, open windows overlooking the gardens, and a menagerie full of white doves.

He commissions an Orlesian tailor to assemble a wardrobe befitting the favored slave of a magister. Leto will wear silk, silver, and exotic leathers.  “Your little rabbit will be like a Dalish prince,” the tailor enthuses. “No one could ever forget his heritage. The halla at the tribute ceremony was a clever twist, your eminence!”

You suspect that Danarius’ own children are not privy to such gratuitous displays of status. But Leto is the centerpiece, the crowning jewel of your lord’s crown. A pretty fascination in a gilded cage, who does not yet know that death is clawing its way through the bars. 

*

There are parties, naturally, though the feature is always noticeably absent.  Magister Tarquin pays a few pretty words to the relatives of tributes who—unfortunately—did not survive, and mingles with the socialites of the court, providing sparse details when they inquire about his plans for Leto. Afterwards, he usually has the slave introduce himself to the guests, heavily veiled and forbidden from speaking with a loose tongue.  

In the triclinium, you lounge with your master’s guests on plush sofas, arranged in order of status; Magister Corinius is ostensibly at the edge of this half-circle of nobility, though does not seem to notice, dribbling crumbs across the floor and eyeing the slaves. 

The laughter from an earlier joke dies down. Some crude bit about Orlesian women. As it does, the elves go to replenish the food on the small table at the center, followed by Leto, who carries a jug of mixed water and wine. He wears a white tunic that does not reach his knees, and gold jewelry that has been fitted to the edge of his tapered ears. 

You hold out your cup, and offer him a mirthless smile as he refills it. 

“Every time I see you, Tarquin, you’ve done yet another impressive thing,” Magister Pavarotti says, her accent slightly off after many years spent in Nevarra. She’s always been a fan of Danarius’ academic pursuits, particularly his attention to aesthetic. “What inspired your latest acquisition? _Everyone_ in Qarinus is talking about how the tournament ended.”

“What else, but his fascination with the elves of Arlathan?” Corinius says, and his eyes wander–naturally–to Leto. Careless fool. “If they were so very clever and artistic and important, perhaps they would have the empire and we would be scrubbing floors on our knees.”

“A toast to that,” you say, and they sip with you. 

Danarius snaps his fingers at a girl and asks her to perform a song on her flute. She plays. The empty plates are cleared from the table and new, splendorous dishes laid down. 

“This one is my favorite,” Corinius says, drunk, indicating Leto with his wine sloshing in the goblet. “It’s difficult to believe you want to risk him with this…ritual of yours. He is very nearly perfect. Danarius, friend, I could not possibly hope to persuade you to part with him for any sum?”

“Not for any sum, no,” Danarius says.

“Not even ten-thousand solid gold imperials, this very night?”

“Not for twenty-thousand. When I am done with him, Corinius, he will be worth more than you could ever fathom. No amount of coin could ever dissuade me from pursuing the glorious ideal he could one day embody. Imagine: human flesh in perfect harmony with lyrium, on my leash.”

Leto moves to fill another guest’s cup, and instead, Corinius takes hold of his wrist, making him drop the jug of wine. 

“A moment,  _lepus._ I was not finished with you.” He runs his hand up Leto’s thigh and beneath the white cloth of his tunic, stained with drops of red wine. The elf freezes, unsure of whether this is permitted. The line between insulting a guest and pleasing his master is thin.  

“Corinius,” Danarius chides, “you’re taking advantage of my hospitality.” 

Corinius pulls him close. Breathes him. Wipes his mouth on a silk napkin and then snaps at a serving girl to clean up the mess on the floor. Leto recoils into the shadowed corner of the triclinium as bruises flower on his wrist. 

“Leto,” Danarius says, sharply. “Do you dance?” 

Leto looks at him in confusion. “I beg your pardon,  _dominus_?” 

“Dance, Leto. Do you dance?” 

“I…” He swallows. “I have done so,  _dominus,_ but I have never learned properly.” 

“That’s quite alright,” your master says. “I will have someone teach you. In the meantime, my pet, please entertain these gentlemen. The girl will play. And you will dance for us.” 

*

You and a Tranquil mage go to Leto’s quarters to find him plucking absently at a lyre, his green eyes misty with unspoken grief. When the Tranquil closes and locks the door behind you, he startles, and looks to his guards for some clue as to why you are here. Then he sees the lead-lined, decorated box in the Tranquil’s hands: a lyrium philter. 

His guards grab each of his limbs and hold him down on the bed. Despite the struggles, the screams, you and the other five men manage to pry open his mouth and force him to swallow. This first night is the hardest; he falls into a fever, and the fever comes coupled with hallucinations. He is back in the arena. He is tilling the soil with his mother. He claims that his blood is boiling.

Danarius goes to his bedside, more than once, treating him with special warming salves and sweet tonics. He reads to him in lower Tevene–the language of commoners, of slaves–and pretends to write letters to Leto’s family.

“Your mother and sister are doing well,” the magister lies. “But they have not written back in some time, I am afraid. Perhaps their new lives are especially prosperous.”  

Eventually, Leto does not even flinch when you come to him, and politely asks that he be allowed to administer the dose himself. 

*

Silus.

He was once a priest, but now he is a mercenary, selling his sword to noble families across Tevinter and Orlais. Primarily, he has served as a personal bodyguard. He has protected at least one member of every loyal and notable house in the magisterium, but recently, his contracts have been more selective.

You bring him to Leto, who is sitting alone in the gardens, staring out across the sea.

You clear your throat. “Your new minder, elf.”

He turns to look at you, and says nothing.

“I will not harm you,” Silus says. He takes a tentative step forward. “My name is Silus of House Venitas. The magister has hired me to watch over you, and keep you safe from harm, until I am no longer needed.”

“You are not needed,” Leto says. “I can protect myself.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Silus says. “But some forms of protection are not as clear as others.”

“Magister Tarquin is not the only magister in Minrathous, elf,” you say. “Your existence means that your master is close to accomplishing what none have in a thousand years. Some would only kill you. Others would do worse. Most seek information, and their spies are everywhere.”

*

It is a blood-red sunset when they burn Hyacinth. The elf died in his sleep, under questionable circumstances, but few would ever ask. Dressed in white, he is cremated in a private ceremony, and his ashes scattered somewhere at sea. Danarius does not hold another party for some time, and he orders that Hyacinth’s quarters be shuttered.

“He was sixteen when he came into my possession,” Danarius says to you, walking in the gardens among his slave’s namesake. “Antivan, and he could not speak a word of Tevene. He was striking, with his yellow hair and his bright eyes. I would not see him live to be cast aside and diminished; I would rather remember him as he was.”  

*

The hunt ends with four wyverns killed and the largest captured in a steel cage. When the hunting party—yourself, the magister, a few of his colleagues, and a handful of favorite slaves—makes camp for the evening, Leto remains near the wyvern cage with Silus. He admires the creature, for some unfathomable reason, and strokes it absently through the bars. Even you are surprised that it has not attempted to attack him.

“What will happen to it?” he asks his minder, voice muffled beneath his veil.

“It will undoubtedly be killed in Minrathous,” Silus says, running a cloth along his sword. “Wyverns are dangerous creatures. And their hide makes for excellent armor.”

“It seems a waste,” Leto says.

Danarius approaches, surveying the beast as it grunts softly in its enclosure. Leto begins to get to his knees but the magister grabs his arm. “Now, now, let’s not get your pretty clothes mussed,” he says. “Do you like the wyvern, Leto? It is a beautiful creature, to be sure. I was quite impressed that we managed to capture it in the first place.”

“It was an admirable feat, _dominus,_ ” Leto says, tonelessly.

Danarius stares at him. Then he turns to you. “Lady Hadriana, do we have room for a wyvern in the menagerie?”

“Of course, your eminence.”

“Make the arrangements,” he says. “I only want my Leto to be happy.”

*

Leto is shades of summer. He goes to the coast with his entourage and returns with gold in his hair and seashells in his satchel, small gifts for his master. He watches the sun rise from his window in the east wing of the villa. He spars with himself barefoot in the grassy courtyard and has named each of his doves. When he recites poetry, his voice is as animated and pronounced as the better players of Minrathous. His eyes are like green fire. 

Danarius watches him from shadow. Like deep winter frost, he waits for Leto to bloom. 

“I…find myself overcome with desire for him,” he says. “He haunts me. I thought that I could own him, this fire, this wild little halla. But I am his. I almost do not wish to go through with the ritual, Lady Eliseus; I almost believe that I could die happily, so long as he never runs from me.” 

“You are a fool,” you say. “And I do not know what I can do to cure that.” 

“I do not seek a cure,” he says, his voice a low hiss. “I only wish that he would give himself to me freely. While the shroud of this ritual hangs over his head, and the specter of Hyacinth in his sheets, he is cold to me. Surrounded by splendor, and he looks at me as if I am a horror.”

*

You are walking past the chapel when you find Leto and Silus deep in prayer. Leto kneels at an altar that is covered in supposed symbols of the Chantry. But the worship here in Tevinter is a double-edged sword; serpents and old gods hide in the tapestries, the architecture. Blood grooves are carved deep into the walls and stone floor.

“ _Oculis excaecati, dolor, in densa caligine; invocantem exaudierit me vocem in monte._..”

“ _Deus exaudit orationem puer_ ,” Silus says. “He will not forsake you. He has not yet.” 

“I am afraid, Silus,” Leto says. 

“Fear is what has sustained you. Fear is what makes you stronger. Do not throw away the sacrifice of the men and women who died for the gift you will soon claim. Do not forget your family.”

*

The eve before the ritual, Danarius invites Leto to the master wing, and asks that you prepare him with sweet wine and a lavender bath and white silk. You tip a small vial of potion into his goblet so that he is quiet and complacent. You deliver him, dazed and only half-lucid, to the master’s chambers, and then take your leave.

The whole affair is rather grim, you decide. At the pale light of dawn you collect Leto, unmarked and conscious and staring wistfully at the sunrise from his master’s window. You wonder if he really was a virgin after all, but the slaves have already changed the sheets, and Danarius is nowhere to be found.

Only Leto’s reticence to speak gleans any truth.

*

They take him to the underground chamber as if preparing a lamb for sacrifice. Leto is trembling, but strong-willed, head held high as he approaches the scaffold where he will be tied down and (it is assumed, but not stated) slaughtered. There is a strong sense of unease among the apprentices, and even Danarius himself; despite all of your preparations, there is a very good chance Leto will be yet another failure of impossible trials. 

You smile coldly at the child, and hold out a blindfold. He shakes his head. 

“If it pleases you,  _domina,_ I would see my fate.” 

You nod, and allow Silas to take his hand–always at the slave’s beck and call–and help him up onto the scaffold. Silus is gentle, offering him water and soft words, and when he binds him he apologizes. The straps are made of strong hide and steel but lined with soft material for Leto’s comfort. It will not do any good, you know, but Silas insisted the boy need not go through unnecessary pain. 

“Fare thee well, Silus,” you say. “Your final payment is forthcoming.” 

“Keep your coin, witch,” Silus says. “Today you desecrate the Maker’s realm.”

As he departs you hear: “ _Obliti sumus in ignorantia offensionis. Sed lumine, ut dissolverem tenebrarum.._.”

You ensure the lyrium is sufficiently prepared. You direct the Tranquil into their positions, and have the apprentices check their mana. You count the slaves you have personally selected as potential blood sacrifices in the cairn just above the laboratory. 

And then, Danarius arrives, washing his hands in a basin, breathing deeply before seeing to Leto. 

“Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Leto says tonelessly. 

“Are you willing?” 

“Yes.” 

“Think of your mother and sister,” Danarius says. “You must be strong. If your spirit leaves this realm, if your body rejects the lyrium, the spell will be corrupted and you will be completely obliterated. Regardless of the pain, or the fear, you will  _not_ ruin all of our work. Is that clear?” 

“Yes,  _dominus.”_

Danarius watches him for what seems a long time. Then he nods his head, a signal to begin. 

Leto begins lucid–gritting his teeth as the Tranquil carve into his skin, body straining from pain–but seems to fracture at the first kiss of lyrium. A strong will cannot prevent autonomous responses to life-threatening pain, and so he shrieks and sobs and tries to twist away, held firmly in place by the restraints. The smell of metal and burning flesh and blood. 

“Hush, now,” Danarius says, soft and gentle, directing the ritual from a safe distance. Sweat trickles down his brow. “Hush.” 

The ritual is like witnessing the genocide or birth of entire nations, destruction and creation in its most primal form. For four days, the Fade presses in like a heavy and suffocating weight, grumbling deep in the walls, the scent of ozone and death oppressive in its intensity. The Tranquil keep a silent vigil, obediently lacerating Leto’s flesh, then branding him with precious quantities of lyrium, unflinching even as their fingers drip with the blood of an innocent. You and the other loyal apprentices tremble as you work to hold the Veil at bay, taking turns in a balance of wards and slaughter. Sacrificial blood dribbles down grooves in the walls, the stone floor, creating a powerful sigil. 

So it goes, for a very long time–mutilation, burning, screams, a pervading sense that all involved in this rite are desecrating some forbidden realm of creation. Slowly, you kill Leto, feeling his life force ebb and fade, over and over, bolstering the fragments of his broken spirit with the lives of slaves in the cairn. Their blood sustains him, when his heart stops beating; their cries in the dark go quiet as he screams for his mother. 

Spirits press in through the Veil, attracted to Leto’s constant flow between life and death; you cannot keep them all out. Spirits of compassion are called by his screams. Spirits of wisdom to his intellect. And yet more that you cannot identify.

Leto’s soul twists, fractures, is melted down to some strange evanescent glow, trembling before meeting the vibrations of the lyrium’s hum. And in the final throngs of the maelstrom, lyrium and mortal flesh reach equilibrium: the Fade emits a deafening crack like thunder, Leto’s body briefly illuminated by an internal breach of the Veil. He arches, bones bright white through his lacerated skin, and then goes still. 

When it is over, he has broken his own bones from struggling; his body is a mess of burns, blood, blisters; the vessels in his eyes have burst from trauma; he lies half-conscious, mute, immobile, hypothermic, his hair falling out in bleached strands. When he breathes it is with wet, shuddering, hoarse gasps. You have created a  _monster_ –

“But he is alive,” Danarius says, reaching out to stroke his Leto’s cheek.  

He is  _alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably add more to this / edit it tonight, but I'm sick of looking at it. Fenris enters in Part III, and after that, we go to Seheron.  
> Comments, kudos, and bookmarks are appreciated~!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Leto's ashes, Fenris rises. Nothing will ever be the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quite a few dark things in this chapter. No detailed descriptions, but you'll get the idea. Thanks for reading, commenting, and kudos'ing this one! Next we'll be going to Seheron.

 

He takes his first breath as if breaking the surface of deep water, thrashing against leather straps. Dried, burnt blood plasters his bones, and the stench--he rots before your very eyes, an abomination yet lingering on. You order a Tranquil assistant to subdue him with a philter of magebane, but before he can tilt the potion past Leto’s lips, the elf tears out of his restraints.

The room goes cold. Frost grows like lichen across the stone, the fixtures cracking in temperatures below-freezing. You scream out a warning, and then slam a hand over your mouth, for it is far too late.

The lyrium explodes in light brighter than the sun, half-blinding you. There is a low hum and then a loud crack like thunder, followed by the sound of glass shattering. The Tranquil are tossed across the chamber by dark spiritual energy, then seize on the ground, blood dribbling out of their eyes and mouths.

Tarquin guardsmen swarm the room, advancing on the elf, who stumbles aimlessly, impervious to the chaos he has wrought. He cowers as the men overcome him, confused nonsense on his tongue, and before you and Magister Tarquin can regain control of the situation there is another telltale hum, another monstrous release of dark energy.

Gore spatters the walls. Broken bodies die.

Only the elf is left breathing, when you finally reach the bottom of the chamber. He sits curled in a corner, trying to hide. His breath is like smoke in the too-cold air.

You fear what you and your master have created. You want to kill it before it tries the same. Heat radiates from the lyrium within him, and it hums uneasily, as if threatening you—as if alive.

“What do you remember?” the magister asks apathetically, looking down on him, his master and creator.

The child can scarcely speak. “Pain,” he rasps, in a voice not quite his own, “and death. Please. Please end us. This was not to be. We would go back to green, still waters.”

“Fear not,  _meus fen-ris._ That pain is over. I will keep you from further harm.”

“’Fenris’?” the elf repeats, the words like stones in his mouth. “Is this our name? We do not know. We do not remember.”  

Danarius’ lips quirk up in a small, sad smile in quiet acknowledgement that Leto is certainly gone from this world. It was an unforeseen but not debilitating consequence of the ritual. He will mourn, in his way.  

“In Tevene it means ‘little wolf,’” Danarius says, reaching out to brush his bloodied, bleached, thinning hair. “You are my little wolf. My Fenris. And I am your father, you friend, your master. Do you understand?” 

The elf sobs, closing his eyes, relinquishing himself to the human contact. “ _Intelligo, pater._ ”

Danarius lulls him to sleep with his magic, a gesture of mercy and calculation. He is proud of what he has sired: he has taken an elf and created a docile monster in infancy.  

He binds himself to his wolf with blood. The magic is simple enough. Fenris will operate as a phylactery, made not of glass but flesh. When close to his master, he will feel stronger—away, and he will weaken. It is not perfect, because it has never been done before.

“He needs to know nothing but devotion,” Danarius murmurs, some dark obsession clouding his eyes. It is not unlike how he used to look at sweet, enduring Leto. “He will see me as his maker and his heart.”

Fenris nuzzles contentedly against his  _dominus,_ falling asleep in the afterglow.

“Leave us.”

*

 

You and the master take every precaution. Fenris is chained and entombed in a lead-lined, deeply warded chamber in the catacombs, drugged with a combination of magebane and sleeping drought, bound with blood magic, and guarded by a fully armed battalion of templars.

He slips in and out of consciousness, the splintered fragments of his soul congealing into one as he recovers. What you initially thought was confusion, a side effect of amnesia, turns out to be a symptom of the ritual itself: when Leto’s soul was torn asunder, spirits rushed towards the chaos, and augmented the gaps.

“It’s like metallurgy,” Danarius says. “My Fenris is a spiritual alloy, forged by my hand.”

You bristle indignantly. Fenris is as much _your_ trophy as his. It was _you_ who kept him alive, ripped him from the soft embrace of death.

 

*

A week after rebirth, chained in the dark, Fenris expresses that he has questions.  

The magister acquiesces. He brings a basket of pastries and a cold, calm visage.

“How old are we?”

“You have turned fifteen years old only recently,” Danarius responds, vaguely.

“Are there others like us?”

  
“No. You are unique: an extraordinary feat of magic and human intellect. I have created a symbiotic relationship between your flesh and the lyrium within it. You are dangerous, Fenris, beyond anything you could ever imagine. But do not worry. I will temper you.”  

Fenris hesitates.

“Speak, slave.”

The elf blinks, wary. “What are…what am I, _pater_ , other than dangerous?”

“Is not clear yet, _meus fen-ris_? You are mine.”

*

He becomes beautiful, in that darkness, sustained by only scraps of food, trickles of water and mere brushings of affection. Danarius seems to feed on this newfound purity, vulnerability, enjoys holding the smallest of comforts away from him at arm’s length. Let me brush your hair, he says, and I will give you a drink of wine. Kiss me, and I will let the men outside your door unchain you, and provide a bed for you to sleep on.

At first he seems satisfied to keep the creature hidden away, his pretty and dangerous secret, power sleeping fitfully within him. But Fenris is a weapon, a wraith of darkness and destruction, and he must be retrained in Leto’s shadow. Danarius claims his innocence again—overpowers him, puts fear of death and pain in him— before he allows him to see sunlight.

*

“You are remarkable because you can open the Fade within your body,” Danarius mentors, when Fenris has recovered enough to attempt it. “There are many uses for this, but for now, let us focus on activation. You should know how to do it instinctively. Are you ready?”

Fenris nods, eager to please him in return for what he perceives as kindness, a reprieve from the isolation of his dark prison. He lies restlessly on the old cot where his master raped him, where it was made clear how little he is worth, and how completely his existence depends on bartering for _pater’s_ kindness.

You hear—something, some snap of equilibrium, a dull thrumming emanating from the elf’s frail body. The room goes cold, as if Fenris is absorbing the energy from it by will alone. He makes a sharp noise of pain, and then the lyrium in his skin awakens pale blue.

Fenris hyperventilates, holding on as long as he can, clutching his master’s hand in agony.

“It’s beautiful,” you say of the silver-blue streaks alighting on his elven form. His eyes glow evanescent-white, and he loses corporealness, fading half-out of the world like smoke, flickering. 

Danarius watches him, hungry, awed. “What do you see?”

Blood trickles out of Fenris’ mouth. “Fog,” he says. “Shapes in the dark. You are both like—like light, like the brightest light I have ever seen. But, but—please, _pater,_ the pain. It is fire licking my bones.”

“He will need to grow used to that,” you scoff.

Danarius gives you a look of warning. “Very well, _meus fen-ris_. Come back to me.”

Fenris gasps in relief, the lyrium in his skin going dark like a match blown out. He falls unconscious against Danarius, his white hair damp with sweat.

*

He begins a severe training regimen at Danarius’ command, his days structured around rigid expectation. He practices several distinct martial styles, Tevene and Elvhen in origin, until his feet are bleeding—until he collapses from exhaustion. When he stumbles, he is beaten by his training masters or starved.

You and the magister teach Fenris how to utilize the lyrium ever more effectively, combining your intellect with his combative competency. He is naturally graceful and quick on his feet, and he uses his lyrium to decrease his mass and move like flashes of lightning. He can also expend bursts of dark spiritual energy to incapacitate or kill opponents outright.

Every flaw in his form is eradicated through repetition. Every misstep is punished, either by the whip or the hand or the burning of blood magic. Fenris learns to fear his own mistakes.

Eventually, the dance comes easily to him. He moves as Leto did, natural and fluid, using the momentum of one attack to feed another, thinking of nothing but the sword in his grip and the dirt beneath his bare feet, emboldened by his master’s stare from across the courtyard.  

*

Danarius shows Fenris to his quarters—the very same Leto once slept in, accessible only by the master wing. They have been refurnished and scrubbed of any possible sign of having been lived in, and scoured again for vulnerabilities (reading materials, unaccounted entryways, even the stray stick of charcoal that might be used for writing).

Danarius watches as Fenris wanders the chamber. The elf is understandably awed, afraid to touch even a single luxury; the lacquered wardrobe, the silver bird cage, the filigree door that opens to a sprawling balcony, the assortment of pretty baubles. He has a pleasant view of the Tevinter countryside, from here—cragged cliffs and violet-grey ocean, a shadow of jungle.

“Do these arrangements please you?” Danarius asks.

A light breeze from the veranda stirs Fenris’ long, moon-white hair. “Yes, _pater._ ”

You think you see something resembling affection in Danarius’ usual cold demeanor. Then it passes. “This is all conditional, of course,” he says. “Your comfort depends on your duty. I want to keep you well, my Fenris, as befits your station. But should you displease me, I can become quite cruel.”

“You have been kind, _pater,_ ” Fenris says. Compared to a cold, dark cell, this opulence must seem merciful indeed.

But mercies have a price.

*

Fenris perfectly embodies the ethereal beauty that the Tevinter court has been trying (and failing) to imitate since the fall of Arlathan, as Leto did before him. But now it is different. Now he has been reforged.

Danarius looks at him, watches him, for hours on end; he has him stand alone, expressionless, unmoving, for however long it pleases him.

He traces his face with his eyes, his fingers, hand on his throat, gentle but firm. He sips wine by the fire and speaks in hushed whispers (to himself, but often to you) about the play of shadows on his little wolf’s features, the coiled strength in his slight frame, the darkness and the innocence in his pretty emerald eyes. He delights in terrorizing him by doing nothing at all.

He asks him: “Would you kill for me?”

And Fenris, enthralled, his eyes cold fire, can only say “ _yes_.”  

*

 “Remember, you are the shield at my back,” Danarius says, sweat dripping down his aged forehead as he stares down his slave in the training courtyard. “We fight as _one_ , my little wolf. Once and again! Do not fight the lyrium. Let it course through you as water through a sieve.”

Fenris bares his teeth, the magic in his skin screaming. He lunges as his master puts up a shield. The sword flies out of his hands.

“Faster, wolf! You cannot protect me if I can best you!”

*

Gradually, Danarius introduces Fenris to the rest of the household servants and slaves, making a show of it to instigate their petty jealousy. He dresses Fenris in a silk tunic, silver armor, and gossamer veil and parades him about at his side, designating him without words as the highest-ranking slave of the Tarquin estate: the jewel in his crown. He is untouchable, unsullied, and dangerous, the sword at his back as effective as teeth.

Fenris will protect him, serve him, or lie with him, if that is what Danarius desires.

*

You pour every worry, every doubt into her image in the glass. You spend hours before the mirror, painting your lashes and your lips, curling your hair with heated iron, dabbing your wrists with Orlesian scents. You tell her your darkest wish (that the magister will die) and your darkest fear (that even the elf-slave Fenris will overshadow you).

Once, you are prattling away about another marriage arrangement gone awry, but when you turn the hand-mirror towards yourself, you see not your own pretty face but the warped and haggard image of an old crone. You screech, and throw the mirror across the room, the glass shattering as Confidence’s laughter rings in your ear.

*

A selection of guests attends, flashing their golden tesserae with pride. It is no ordinary party, and so every flower in the garden, every fragrance in the golden halls, every slave girl decorated with sheer cloth and pearl, has been carefully refined.

Lyrium is everywhere. The magister has provided fonts bloated with shimmering blue potion, and had Tranquil enchant the walls with runes to make them glow silver. Raw lyrium rests protected in translucent lead display cases, arranged to mimic Dwarven mines. The ceiling glitters with shards of lyrium, sapphire, and aquamarine.

A grotesque display of wealth, you hear some jealously mutter, as they help themselves to more of it.  

The Archon himself is in attendance, though you have not seen him. Apparently, he prefers to appear fashionably late to celebrations of this caliber, awaiting in luxurious alcoves and attended by a private entourage of purebred bed-slaves. He seldom partakes outside of his own.

Danarius addresses the finer members of the court, draped in regal velvet and gold, his staff proudly in hand:

“Some have asked why I so desperately chased this fantasy for so long: of what use is the fabled Lyrium Ghost? Friends, colleagues, I have built my legacy upon a standard of excellence and vigilance. _Na via lerno Victoria!_ It has been the Tarquin motto for as long as the Imperium has made Thedas tremble. What I show you tonight is no mere novelty, but a force of destruction and beauty that will inspire Tevinter academia and war for a thousand years.”

There is eager applause.

“I have transformed a crude elf into a work of art. Behold Fenris, my wolf.”

A pattern of white light erupts on the marble dais, a telltale earthly hum vibrating through your bones. The large hall—warm a moment ago from Tevinter summer—is suddenly frigid, and you hear a murmur of confusion and anticipation in the crowd. Fenris, for his part, remains still.

“What you see now is lyrium: the elf may consciously activate the Fade within his own flesh at will. He is no mage, cannot transform or bring matter into being, but he may manipulate it without expending mana. There are a number of uses for this. I will show them to you now.”

Obediently, Fenris phases into a more wraithlike form, visibly translucent, like white smoke in the dark.

“His corporeal form occupies two planes of existence simultaneously, a quantum effect that grants inhuman speed, strength, and power. Normal laws of physics do not apply to him, now, and yet at will he may still interact with the world. Whatever he touches is immediately brought into this same half-material state.”

A slave hands Fenris a glittering silver sword. As soon as his hand touches it, it too fades out of the world.

“Ah, but what’s this, dear guests?” Danarius says with a grin, as a chained, beastly creature is forced onto the dais.

It snarls in the light of the wisps bright in its eyes: a Qunari, unarmed but still dangerous. Slaves unchain the beast and hand it a sword, though it knocks it away, shouting in broken Tevene that it will not fight without its own weapon.

You frown from where you sit just before the dais, and then twist the Qunari’s blood to your bidding, forcing it to advance on Fenris. He fights you every step of the way, screeching in your head, damning you in beast-tongue for forcing him to fight an enslaved being. He would rather die than submit but it does not matter in the end.

Fenris moves like lightning, cutting the Qunari’s legs out from under him in a matter of seconds, bringing him to his knees. The crowd audibly grows more excited, wondering aloud how he could possibly be so quick, so clever, so refined in his technique.

Danarius continues.

“Fenris can emit concentrated bursts of spiritual energy. This is extremely debilitating and can affect wide swathes of opponents, but for tonight, we will settle for just one.”

The thrumming pitches higher, like a wire about to snap, and then the energy is released in a flash of bright light. The Qunari is knocked backwards by the concentration of the burst and then violently shakes, mouth bloody. He cries out as his limbs contort from shock.

“Fenris can bypass material reality while in this wraith state, if he so chooses; for example, he can phase through the flesh and bone of an enemy”—Fenris thrusts his arm through the body of the Qunari, passing in without effort—“solidify, and emit another concentrated burst.”

There is a loud crack and spatter of gore as Fenris draws back his arm. The Qunari falls dead, blood and tissue spilling out from a gaping, messy hole in his chest. You feel its life end, and are forced out of its head.

“It _can_ be done more cleanly, certainly, but why would I want that?” Danarius asks, and the crowd laughs with him. They erupt into applause and stand for him, truly impressed. The magister swells with vindication.

Fenris looks at the gore matted in his fist, dead-eyed and listless, and is swiftly led out of sight.

*

Later, in the perfume of terraced gardens, Danarius hosts a reception so that members of the magisterium can meet his wolf face-to-face. It’s a little quieter than the feast: soft flutes, soft lighting, and softer spirits in fine crystal glasses befit the mood.

Fenris has been covered in an immodest satin tunic that does not give him the dignity of going past his knees; white-blue mana wisps complement his softer features. His long white hair is braided Tevinter-style, with a delicate silver chain woven through it and around his throat. He does not speak, but nods cordially when addressed.

“He doesn’t look so dangerous now,” Magister Pavus observes.  

“He’s enthralled with loyalty,” Danarius says, with humor. “But do not be fooled. If I gave the right command, you would stand little chance against him.”

The circle of men laugh. 

“He is named after an elven god,” Danarius continues. “Fen’harel. The markings, too, are based on their heretical vallaslin. But I have made this elf my own. He is not just a warrior; he is a symbol.” 

Magister Corinius invited himself by way of counterfeit tesserae. You do not deign to speak to him directly, resenting him for his dismissal of you a year before. 

“Congratulations are in order,” the oily little man says. “You now control one of the most powerful creatures in Thedas. I only hope that you use him well. A weapon is only as good as the one who wields it.” He raises a toast, and the others follow suit. It is not genuine. You decide to watch him closely.

A strange hush falls over the assembled nobility on the promenade.

“Ridonis,” you whisper in Magister Tarquin’s ear.

The Archon and an impressive assemblage of mage bodyguards glide elegantly towards you, parting the crowd of guests like a sea.

Corinius, realizing his status as unwelcome and perhaps drunk on too much wine, takes the hand of your master’s slave and kisses it. A bold statement - and foolish. He should well declare he intends to assassinate Magister Tarquin, as it stands; this is not the Orlesian court, and there is no room for clumsy elusiveness.

“It has been an honor, Magister Tarquin, Lady Eliseus. Fenris.” He takes his leave, and his fellow magisters follow, creating conscious space for His Grace. Before long, the patio is nearly empty, but for your master, his slave, and his most honored guest. 

Archon Ridonis is a tall, intimidating man whose presence can warp the Veil itself. He practices old, primal magics, and he smells of charcoal and blood. Beneath the hood, his face is worn from years of abusing his art, and his eyes are so dark as to be black.  

You and your master bend to him. Fenris instinctively understands his own status--less than yours, by far--and gets to his knees, low to the ground, where he remains. 

The Archon scarcely acknowledges you or Magister Tarquin. Instead, he lingers on the elf at your feet.

“An interesting creature,” Ridonis says in an unnatural timbre. “This was your doing, Danarius?” 

“Yes, Your Grace,” Danarius says. “I hope that it pleases you.” 

The Archon laughs. “I was impressed by his capacity for murder, certainly. With your consent, I will examine him more thoroughly. On your feet, slave.”

Fenris acquiesces, and Ridonis takes his face in his hands by force. You sense the thrum of his power as he breaches the elf’s mind, Fenris’ consciousness screaming in shock. The elf goes still, eyelids fluttering, before he closes them.

“Do not fight me, elf,” the Archon commands. “I see. Interesting.” He addresses Danarius. “His soul is— _writhing_ , like none I have ever felt. While he submits, the lyrium battles me as I speak. Alas, there are parts of his mind even I cannot touch, so strong is his connection to the Fade.” 

He lets Fenris go. The elf inhales sharply, and then looks away, flushing with shame as if he has been found unclothed. 

“You are a rare specimen, slave,” the Archon says. “And your master, well deserving of praise. Serve him faithfully, lest you disappoint the Imperium with a squandered gift. And Danarius--I pray you enjoy the spoils of your victory, but should you grow bored of him, I will pay well for his flesh, dead or living. Congratulations.”

*

Lady Hadriana of House Eliseus:

Per your demonstrated sufficiency, the Imperium henceforth recognizes the Eliseus House as _genus laetan_ (and afford it all privileges thereof) without stipulation and indefinitely, until such point in the lineage that it shall again be taken into consideration.

In addition, I am adequately impressed with the specimen that you and your master, Magister Danarius Merula Tarquin of Minrathous, acquired and developed. It is a fascinating creature that exemplifies the finest aspects of Tevinter culture, academics, and tradition.

It is for this reason that I have judiciously decided to appoint you the title and position of Magister in the High Senate of Minrathous, which includes but is not limited to the duties of provincial administration, acting as legal and academic counsel, participating in the creation and codification of Imperial law, etc. etc.

I trust that you will respond to the appointment prudently.

With utmost sincerity and goodwill,

His Eminence Flavio Ridonis XI, Archon and Supreme Magus of the Tevinter Imperium

*

Fenris is always at Danarius’ side, and thus always at the mercy of his cruelty and his affection. In some ways, he is insulated from violence; Danarius quickly establishes that Fenris is not to be used for anything as disgraceful as testing his drink for poison, or struck at the slightest hint of disobedience. Instead he uses a slave-boy as a proxy.

It begins with a dropped jug of wine. No matter—a bit of broken ceramic and spilled vintage. But Fenris is made to watch as Danarius lashes the young boy three times. The child is dismissed, bleeding and in tears, and the meal resumes.

Then, Fenris stumbles in his training regimen; he clumsily trips, his opponent gains the upper hand, and the elf is left embarrassed and dusty on the ground of the training courtyard.

Again, the slave-boy is brought out, whipped, and—to rub salt in the wound—his hand is cut off at the wrist.

Fenris begins to tread more carefully.

*

Danarius coughs in the midst of a Magisterium session. You ignore it, and continue to listen to the session deliberation. He coughs again. More incessant, more desperate. Bright blood spatters his handkerchief. Your eyes widen, slightly, and you slip him a dose of tonic, wary that others will see his weakness.

He sips it shakily. He does not offer any thanks.

*

You are angry about something--though later you cannot recall exactly what—and beat your hand-slave with a hairbrush until it breaks. Then, you throw her against the vanity, wrap your hands around her throat, strangle her until the rage subsides and you can catch your breath.

You collect yourself, step away from her. “I apologize, Minette,” you say, voice rough from screaming. You hand her a handkerchief to dry her tears, and then notice her blood on your wrist.

You can feel it. Hear it. Smell it. It has a heartbeat, has a beautiful sort of energy to it, young and rosy and pure. Your flesh feels alive again, dampened by a bit of the elf-girl’s blood, and you wonder—

She snatches the handkerchief from you and tears from the room, sobbing.

*

It is not unexpected when Magister Corinius finally attempts to assassinate Danarius. The affair takes place at an informal dinner near the beginning of the third course. It is sloppy, underwhelming, and the assassin is quickly dispatched by Fenris, slammed against a wall and disemboweled. The elf scarcely needed to move at all. 

“I expected better,” Danarius says, making a facetious toast in Corinius’ direction. He insists on having him finish his dinner, bound to his chair and bleeding though he might be. The assassin’s corpse grows cold where it fell.

Corinius glares at him. “I once called you a friend.”

Danarius rolls his eyes, and sips gingerly at his wine. “Perhaps you may again, one day, as soon you put this childish behavior behind you.”

“I have given you more of myself than you rightfully deserve,” Corinius spits. “I gave you gold, allies, my time and goodwill. I still mourn for him, Danarius, the elf at your feet—“

“—Silence your tongue, or I will cut it out,” Danarius warns, suddenly in a dangerous mood.

Fenris keeps his gaze down, flinching when his master raises his voice.

“He does not know, does he?” Corinius continues, licking his lips, having finally found the magister’s weakness at last. “What you did to him? He was so good, Danarius, so pure—I would have paid a thousand times his blood price if you would have only let me take him—“

“—breathe another word, and I will burn you to oil,” Danarius hisses.

Corinius laughs. “Do it! Burn me! Crucify me if it pleases you. But I have an alternative suggestion. Duel me, in fair combat. Duel me for honor, if for nothing else. After all—what is done in the mind is as terrible as what is done in deed. And if I had my way, he would be at my feet, at my table, _mine_ to control.”

*

The quaestor’s eyes flit between the two parties. “For the crime of attempted desecration of property, Magister Danarius Merula Tarquin challenges Magister Corinius Aemilius Privernas to a duel, victory guaranteeing ownership of the elf-slave Fenris, designated property of House Tarquin. Do you agree to these terms, gentlemen?” 

“I agree,” Danarius says. “I fight for the honor of myself and my slave.” 

“When I have him, Danarius, I have no doubt he will fight me,” Corinius says. “While your ashes are still warm, I will--”

“Enough,” the quaestor says. “The terms of defeat?” 

“When this filth lies dead,” Danarius says. “I will not suffer his existence any longer.” 

The quaestor nods, and the men turn on each other to take their final steps. You are not worried--Danarius is an accomplished duelist who has taken many lives--but Fenris is beside himself. He has not spoken once, and he watches the proceedings with grim helplessness you do not envy.

"Fear not," you say. "You should be happy to have a master that is willing to fight for you."

"I did not  _ask_ him to," Fenris mutters beneath his veil. “If anyone should fight, it is I.”

"What would you have him do, slave? If it comforts you to know, you are merely the symbol of a decades-long feud. Your master is defending his bloodline and his honor, more so than your life. Pray that he is victorious."

The quaestor counts from ten. Corinius cheats, and strikes at two. Danarius throws up an iron-hard barrier and Corinius' flames blanket around it like water on stone. A few moments in, and they already thoroughly intend to kill. 

Danarius employs a burst of force magic, and throws Corinius across the field, sending him rolling in the dust, his robes flying up. Corinius pounds his staff into the ground, stopping his fall, and sends a rain of fire down on his opponent. Again, this is deflected, and Danarius descends upon him, his eyes dark and feral. 

“What’s wrong, Corinius? Am I more skilled than you, after all?” 

Corinius growls, baring his teeth.

Danarius lifts up his staff and lets a streaking bolt of lightning hammer Corinius back. The light is so bright and its heat so intense you can feel it up here in the magisterium box. Corinius convulses and burns, but when the strike dims, he still moves, coughing as the stench of burning meat tinges the air. 

He laughs. “I can still kill you, Tarquin!” He slits his own wrist. 

A dozen shades appear, monstrous and screeching. Danarius elegantly cuts his hand on the blade of his staff, and then lets the blood drip from his clenched hand like pearls of rain onto scorched earth. You recognize the demon--an aspect of Pride that Danarius has poured his darkest malice into. 

It dispatches of the shades, quickly, while Danarius chases Corinius down, lancing him with fire and force. By the end, Corinius is half-delirious, crawling backwards in the dirt, bleeding and being sucked dry by the magister you call your mentor. 

“I submit,” Corinius says through a mouth full of blood. Danarius slashes him across the face. “Please, I submit!” 

“Fenris!” Danarius calls. The elf hesitates, but goes to him, unarmed and barefoot. Danarius has Corinius kneel at his feet--a fitting, if unorthodox, gesture. The court will see Corinius as disgraced; he is not worth even the respect of this slave. 

“Beg his forgiveness,” Danarius says. “Beg for your life. My Fenris will decide if it is worth granting.” 

“Please,” Corinius says, his blood boiling with Danarius’ magic. “Elf, if there is any mercy in you...forgive me for my trespasses against you, and your honorable master. Please, please...do not kill me...” He moves to kiss his feet, and Fenris moves away, viscerally uncomfortable. 

“What would you have me do with this pathetic creature,  _dominus_?” 

“Do you seek mercy, pet?” 

“I seek  _justice,”_ he says, coolly.

“The lower senate generally recommends penalty equal to the crime,” Danarius says. “Make of that what you will.” 

Fenris’ eyes narrow. “If it pleases the  _quaestor_ , the  _publicanium_ , and my master, I ask that he be made _castrati_ and humiliated before his house. Let him keep his life and his title.” 

Danarius laughs. “Spoken like a true Tevinter.” 

*

Danarius watches his slaves dress and undress Fenris, who stands resolute, arms extended, head held as elegantly as any prince. He watches him train in a private courtyard, skin glistening in Tevinter sun, breathing in a cool dawn. He watches him mix and pour his wine in a silver jug, watches him smile and walk away, watches him pluck at his lyre and watches him dance. 

It was an idea the magister could not relinquish. Fenris is trained in a Tevinter martial style known for its sensuality. Thus, Danarius occasionally finds it rewarding to tie bells to his feet, or have him wear exotic finery, and let him loose like a wildfire. 

Fenris enjoys it. He closes his eyes, and takes flight on the wings of adrenaline and physical exertion. In these moments, as he moves, and teases, and flits about, you feel as if the elf is channeling some remnant of Leto buried in the dark. Perhaps he sees it as just another battle, another war. Perhaps he thinks nothing at all. 

Danarius watches him. Drinks him in. Indeed, he does not seem concerned about the apparent nature of his lust. Young, and innocent in all things after his more recent birth, Fenris meets his desire with curiosity and even pride. It matters not to him whether Danarius is feeding him by hand, or pulling him into his lap, or bedding him in the master wing. 

You think he knows more than he appears to.

*

The magister wants to show you something, so you follow him to the master chamber to find Fenris, completely still, sitting at the edge of the magister’s bed. His eyes are foggy and he seems unaware of his surroundings, dead to the world.

“What is this?”

“Blood control,” Danarius says, simply. “I merely wanted to see how he would react to it. To my great surprise, he submitted to me almost immediately, as if he desired it. To exist without a will. To give up control completely.”

It’s monstrous, you think to yourself, but you are intrigued.

“I sense some fear in him. Anger, too— _surprising,_ given how scarcely emotion shows in his conscious state. I have to wonder how much of my little wolf is truly devoted to me. In any case, he’s beautifully pliant like this, isn’t he?” Danarius runs his fingers through the elf’s hair. “Trapped in a perfect world.”

*

Elves, the Revered Father says, standing at his pulpit. The cathedral is full of noble-blooded people with their powdered faces and their thick skirts and their silk fans. Elves, he says, but elves are noticeably absent; on days of worship, they go to their own temples, because few are welcome here. 

Danarius is a pious man. Few would ever suspect it, and indeed, his devotion is not to Andraste but to the dragon’s blood in her veins. His Maker is an Old God and when he speaks the Chant he bows his head in reverence of the hell He was cast into. Here in the cathedral, Danarius listens quietly to the sermon, and it is easy to forget his sins. 

“Elves are a distortion of the Maker’s creation,” the Father says. “Their hubris led them astray, and it is compassionate--righteous--to lead them back to light. What are the tenets of Tevinter faith? Glory. Devotion. Familial ties. It is in our nature to seek these things, and it is in their nature to turn away.” 

(Three days ago, the templars razed an elven slum. Overrun with crime, and brothels, and filth, the magisterium voted that the problem should be addressed. And what better way to chase vermin than with fire?) 

“The men of the south do not condone our ways,” the Father continues, and there’s a soft hiss of disapproval in the congregation. “They demonize us. They let their elves suffer in poverty, and put their mages in chains. If you are not a lord in Fereldan then you are a dog. If you are not an Empress in Orlais, you are a whore.” 

 (Magister Tarquin and his little wolf at the helm. Danarius in the silver armor of his forebears, and Fenris in satin, steel, and gold. The doors were fettered. The slums set aflame. The templars drew their swords. Elven girls snatched by the hair, for their protection, and claimed by the soldiers as trophies.) 

“What are you in Tevinter, in our glorious Empire, under the gaze of our Maker and the fire of his bride? A man? A woman? An elf? In Tevinter, merit rewards you. Devotion rewards you. A poor man in Tevinter might be called a slave, but a poor man in Fereldan starves.” 

(And when it was done, and all the bodies lay out to smoke, Fenris stared down at them and wept. It was not a pretty thing to behold, and when you saw it, you hit him. Better you than the master.)

“Command obedience. Strike down the wicked, and do not falter. Resist the temptation of mercy and sin. So let it be.”  

So let it be. 

*

On the magister’s name-day, the guests demand that he summon Arcadia—a Desire demon infamous among the circle of friends for her sensuality and bloodlust. Danarius teases them, insists that she is resting after their last round of debauchery, but inevitably gives in.

He tells Fenris to bring a child from the slave barracks, and Fenris, confused, obeys.

“What is your name, boy?” Danarius asks when they return.

The child hesitates. “Lowein, _dominus._ ”

“I do not believe I have seen you before.”

“I am a garden slave, _dominus._ I help _mater_ trim the hedges.”

Danarius seems satisfied. He speaks to Fenris. “I need you to do something for me, pet.”

“What is your wish, _dominus_?” Fenris responds tonelessly, his expression imperceptible beneath his veil.

“I want you to kill Lowein.”

The guests titter to themselves as Fenris’ eyes flit from the boy back to his master. Lowein, for his part, does nothing, perhaps having been suspicious of his fate from the moment he was called here. His small body trembles and his hands curl into weak fists.

Danarius sighs, throwing his silk napkin upon the banquet table, and then gets to his feet. “Younger sacrifices are better suited for this sort of thing,” he tells his guests. “It’s unclear why. I hypothesize that children are better connected to the Fade; their blood is irresistible to a demon. Fenris—hold him down, if you would.”

Fenris moves to restrain the boy but Lowein fights back unexpectedly, pushing and kicking.

“ _Mater! Mater,_ help me! _Mama!_ ”

Danarius slams his staff to the floor and a glyph appears, growling hungrily, glowing scarlet against the pale stone. It burns with unnatural, hellish heat. He nods at Fenris—this, at least, is routine—and in response Fenris draws a jagged dagger from a sheath at his forearm.

He cuts the boy’s hand, intending only to draw blood, and Danarius latches onto the raw power. Lowein goes still, unable to struggle through sluggish limbs and the control over his blood.

“No! No, no! _Mater_!”

Fenris lays the boy on the glyph and then makes to draw away from the magic, away from the evil radiating out from it. Danarius’ guests rise from the feast and surround the sacrifice, ready to greet whatever springs forth from the abyss. The mana in the air is palpable.

“Kill him, Fenris. I command you.”

The elf stares down at the screaming boy, then up at his master, then back down. He raises his blade. There is a moment of hesitation, of weakness, of vulnerability. He brings it down. (Once and again.)

“No!” Lowein screeches. Blood spatters the glyph and it hisses, awakened. He throws his hands up as if to defend himself. “No! Please! _Mater--!”_

Fenris slits his throat, and Lowein stops screaming.

As promised, Danarius summons Arcadia through sacrificial blood, dark magic erupting from Lowein’s corpse. She spirals out of his mouth into corporeal form, full-breasted, ethereal, her nude flesh pale and alien. Her words are poisoned honey and her touch like broiled sin.

*

For his reticence, Danarius punishes Fenris’ whipping slave. This time, one eye is removed, a lesson well-wrought.

*

At galas, banquets, and balls, they always say the same thing: your Fenris is so beautiful, so refined, so _cold._ Does he have a soul? Does he feel anything at all?

When he kills, it is art, a performance of mind and body, evisceration his brush. An assassination by Fenris’ hand is an event most are jealous they haven’t witnessed.

It is whispered that at one such masque, Fenris killed no less than eleven members of the lower senate. No one _saw_ it happen, but they all died of the same thing: massive internal hemorrhaging, but no external wounds. It is as if their hearts were crushed inside of their bodies.

*

At a gladiator tournament in the Proving Arena, Fenris stands beside his master and the master’s wife. Ostensibly, Danarius speaks nary a word to her. She fans herself in the heat, complaining loudly, bored of the ugly elves and the pitiful show, wanting to go back home to her cool countryside estate and her Antivan bed-slave.

Danarius scratches his bet on a scrap of parchment, and then hands it to an elf that scurries away. “What do you think, my little Fenris? The man from Tantervale or the one from Kirkwall?”

“I have not yet decided, _dominus,_ and defer to your judgment.”

“Regardless, I would like to hear your opinion.”

Fenris surveys the arena. “Neither will win. They are well-matched, and have too much pride. Even should one fall the other will soon follow. There—he has cut a major vein, and will bleed out, but does not feel it in the heat of battle. The other is concussed. His sense of balance is deteriorating.”

A few minutes later, the man from Tantervale falls dead. Just as the victory gong rings out, the man from Kirkwall stumbles, then convulses, seizing on the field. He dies before mages can arrive to revive him.

Danarius smirks at his little wolf.

“As I said,” Fenris declares. 

*

Fenris is all you have ever wanted to be. Chained and collared, yes; frequently brutalized, yes. But he has the magister’s affection—love, even—and his praise, and his attentions. In four years, you could not do this.

You want to tear the hair from his skull and burn it.

*

Fenris rides his dracolisk at the forefront of the party alongside his master and yourself, ready for whatever threat may come along the path. Most of the master’s hunting party defer to Fenris’ judgment and advice, as he has become notorious for his intuition and intelligence on the battlefield.

“Identify yourselves,” demands the leader of the Dalish scouting band, arrows trained upon you. “We do not welcome Tevinters here. Turn back and go north or face slaughter.”

Danarius shares a wordless look with Fenris, and then nods.

Fenris removes his hood, revealing his bright white hair and sharp ears. “Forgive us for the intrusion,” he says smoothly. “We are defectors from Seheron, seeking refuge in the Free Marches. I lead, until we reach the Waking Sea. We intend to go our own way from there.”

The Dalish seems comforted by his appearance—what Tevinter slavers would let an elf helm the force?

“And why are you defecting?” he asks.

“It is a bloody war without end,” Fenris responds believably. “We have seen loss and very little gain in return. Rather than remain on a sinking ship, and face certain death, we chose to run. We have little in common beyond that one desire.”

“I see,” the Dalish says, thinking about this. He sighs. “Very well. You may pass through here, but you would do well to avoid the sound of running water. Encampments and aravels litter the river’s edge and the People will shoot you on sight.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Fenris says with a nod. “We do not wish to disturb the People. Ma serranas.”

They continue on their way for a short distance before abruptly changing paths, heading for the river.

“You did well, little wolf,” Danarius says as Fenris covers his head. “Perhaps as a reward, I shall keep a captive for you. Do you want another slave, Fenris? One to keep you comfortable on the road?”

Fenris blinks, as if somewhere very far away inside of his head, and forgets to reply.

*

The Dalish fight back, unfortunately, but at the end of the day you have loaded thirty men and fifteen women into two carts to be sold in Qarinus. The few children are evaluated, but disposed of; it simply is not economical to feed and transport them for the coin they could incur.

The hunting party keeps a few for entertainment. Two young elven males are pitted against each other for sport, forced to fight to the death. (And, pity, but they both end up killing the other.) A few are handed about the camp like trifles, with most of the men in the party partaking.

Fenris lingers on the outer edges of the camp, allegedly on watch duty, but you suspect it has more to do with fear of the party’s ravenous barbarity. His master allows it, perhaps out of practicality rather than mercy. Fenris is Magister Tarquin’s favored, protected by cultural convention and Imperial law against rape, but that is not always a deterrent.

When night falls, Danarius once again summons Arcadia. After the party has had their fill of decadence and pleasure he offers up the remaining captives for her to do with as she likes.

As you are about to leave the remains of the Dalish encampment--slaughtered and eaten halla, burning aravels, sacrifices crying out for mercy, lashed to the husks of trees--Danarius forces Fenris to stay behind.

“This is for shunning my generosity,” Danarius says, “and for your theatrics as we loaded the carts. You are less than an animal, you are a _slave_ , you will die a slave, and you will not forget that. I leave you in the care of Arcadia. She will not touch you, but you will listen to your people screaming as they die, and know my love for you, that I do not leave you to the same fate.”  

When you return at dawn’s light, nothing remains of the captives but gritty dust awash with dark red blood. Fenris is curled up half-hidden in the remains of a burned aravel, drenched in blood not his own, green eyes murky with darkness.

It is some time along the road before he speaks.

“Did she harm you?” Danarius asks.

“No, _dominus_ ,” he responds, softer than the brush of dead leaves. “She didn’t touch me.”

*

You are almost excited when a kitchen slave tries to escape through a hole she dug in the larder. Instead of crucifying her, as Danarius suggests, you drag her kicking and screaming to your bath chamber, where you slit her throat and drain her of her blood. You draw yourself a bath and step inside, sighing. 

You look at your skin. Radiant, perfect, full of youth.

Pride, pretty and monstrous with jagged teeth in your mirror, is so bright you can scarcely look at her.

*

 “Fenris, my itinerary?” Danarius asks as he walks with you in one of Minrathous’ plazas. Today is the inaugural feast of a week-long summer festival, and the city is crowded with peasants and nobles alike preparing to engage in festivities. Colorful paper lanterns drape over the square and the bathhouses are full to the brim of  _soporati_ and their children. Market stall owners shout their wares.

Fenris looks perturbed by the noise and crowds. Every small brush of flesh has made him reach for his sword--undoubtedly afraid that a peasant will make an attempt on his master’s life. As is custom when he is allowed in public space, he wears a covered veil and modest armor, marked as the property of Magister Tarquin. 

He repeats Danarius’ schedule from memory. “At the eleventh hour of the day, mass begins at the Imperial Cathedral and you will take communion. During the second hour after noon, you have arranged a luncheon with Magister Pavus at his estate in Palacia, and intend to give your blessing for young Dorian Pavus’ fifteenth birthday. At sixth hour, you will attend a parade, and at seventh, your carriage will meet us at the fountain in Palacia.” 

Danarius sighs. “A full day, yet again.” 

A cart of handmade jewelry catches your eye. You run your hands over the finely crafted beads, while the woman who owns the cart watches you warily. “Is Pavus’ brat really so important?” 

“He has been a dear friend,” Danarius says. “If...soft, in his governance.” 

You try on a necklace you admire. The blue jewel in the center brings out your eyes. “Fenris, pay attention.” 

He unlatches the satchel of coins at his belt, and hands them to you, not allowed to count money himself. You purchase the necklace and a few other baubles and then go to hand them to Fenris to carry, when a boy slams into you and rips the jewelry out of your hand. 

Before you can cry out, Fenris blurs ahead, faster than wind. Eyes glowing the color of lyrium, he chases the boy down, grabs him by the throat and pins him to a wall. “You have committed crimes against a member of the Magisterium.” 

The boy is wide-eyed, scrabbling at the clawed gauntlet around his neck. 

“Fenris, the valuables,” Danarius says in a bored tone. 

The elf rips a full satchel from the boy’s belt and tosses it to his master. “Shall I dispose of him?” 

Your master considers this for a moment. “What is your name, boy?” 

“Phineas, sir,” the boy stammers. “I have no surname, but my father is Clexus, a merchant in the city. Please, sir, I am but a lowly soporati--had I known that you were a magister, I would not have--” 

“I have no patience for thieves, regardless of their mark,” Danarius says. “Fenris. Teach the boy a lesson and send him on his way. An ear should do.” 

Like a beast, Fenris’ eyes glow bright as he activates his markings. With lyrium endowed-strength, he tears the boy’s ear from his head, leaving a gaping hole. He tosses it in the dust as the boy screams, collapsing to his knees and pressing a hand to the open wound. 

Danarius begins to walk away. 

Out of earshot, he says: “Let us pay a visit to this Clexus. Any father who raises such an abhorrent maggot deserves...reproach.” 

Fenris unsheathes his sword. “Of course,  _dominus_.” 

*

Danarius washes down a dry roast with red wine. His cup goes empty, and he snaps for Fenris to fill it. The elf comes near, obedient and graceful, and offers his master a smile. But when Danarius reaches for him--and you feel your own stomach plunge--he blinks and flinches. It is a revelation that Danarius was not expecting: that his Fenris (his sweet, needy, breathless whore, eating from the palm of his hand and killing men with little but a word) does not love him. 

He violently shoves aside the glass, the silverware, the china, the roast, grabs Fenris by both wrists and slams him against the table. 

“Get out,” Danarius commands, his voice dark, and as you and his guests and his slaves hurry out of the dining room you catch a glimpse of Fenris’ tears. “Filthy fucking  _scortillum--”_

 

*

The whipping-boy—blind, deaf, mute—is crucified in the courtyard this afternoon.

*

“Master, it would please me to go with you,” Fenris says, eyes downcast, as he watches Danarius’ entourage finish their departure preparations. The summer rains have come and gone, leaving lush and overgrown flowers that fill the gardens with overbearing perfumes. It is all too green, too nourished, and Fenris bids farewell to his master, starkly thin against the soon-to-wilt roses. 

Danarius takes his chin in his hand. “My sweet pet, you would be terribly unhappy there. The heat would burn in your markings, and you know that you cannot stomach the food. Protect my estate, little Fenris, and I will reward you when I return.” 

“I understand,  _dominus._ You have my love.” 

You stand attentive at the crest of the pavilion stairs, your gown brushing your ankles in the weak breeze coming across the sea. The sun sets a dark, satisfying red as your master’s carriage departs. Fenris remains there, abandoned and purposeless, until the first light of the stars. 

* 

You “forget” to have the servants prepare Fenris’ meals. During the day, you give him impossible tasks below his station--scrub every latrine and chamber pot, or polish the chandeliers--to make the servants snicker. A sympathetic cook sneaks Fenris a mouthful of bread. You order him to cut off her hands, and he does so, though not without reticence. 

You meet his eyes, and then tip your wine glass off the table. You watch as he gets on his knees and begins to use a napkin to pick the shards off of the marble floor. His hands are shaking from hunger.

“Do you think Magister Tarquin  _loves_ you, Fenris?” you sneer. Fenris goes still. “Oh, I am sure he says as much. But he has  _loved_ many elves, and you will meet the same fate as they have, in time.” 

Fenris pretends not to have ears. 

“Do you know what he did to the one before you?” You laugh around a mouthful of food. “ _Hyacinth_ , I think. Hyacinth was beautiful. He did nothing wrong, not really, but fell out of favor. Danarius became bored with him. And when Hyacinth knew he had wilted, he took poison, and died.” 

You catch Fenris falling asleep at his post at your door, and drag him by his hair to the fireplace, threatening to burn it from his skull, to give him a taste of what Danarius will eventually do to him. You hit him for looking at you, or for poor posture, or for no reason at all. 

You tell him, quite seriously, that you have considered selling him as a whore while Danarius is away; that this would be a death sentence, because the magister has no use for slaves without honor.

Once, Fenris enters the dining hall and finds a plate at his place at the table. His eyes immediately alight, and he looks to you for permission to eat. 

“Are you hungry, slave?” 

“Yes, _domina_ ,” he says, his voice weak, as if his will is hanging by a thread. “Please.” 

You dump the plate on the floor, smirking, and command him to eat. 

He stares at the mess of fish and lentils, hesitating. 

And then gets to his knees.

*

“The rebels have permanent encampments here, and here,” the general says. “If they are aware of your investments in the area--and these men are shrewd--they will attempt to destroy the settlement. Your constituents and your shareholders depend on your intervention.” 

“I do not want to go to war,” Danarius says with a sigh. Grim, he looks over the map. “I do not see why I should draw further attention to myself if what you say is true.” 

“The foothold in Seheron is fragile, and deteriorating by the day,” the general insists. 

Danarius presses his fingers to his lips in contemplation. “How long would this campaign endure? A few weeks? A month? I have pressing matters to attend to at home--I cannot be traipsing about the jungle picking off these fog monkeys.” 

The general hesitates. “We estimate that securing the valley could take upward of three months, at least, your grace. As I have said, the area is  _very_ unstable, and now that the Qunari have gained ground--” 

“ _Vishante kaffas._ And what do you propose I do with my estate, in the meantime?” 

You raise your hand half-heartedly. Perhaps if the bastard dies in Seheron you will inherit some grain of his property. “I have proven perfectly competent, have I not?” 

Fenris, quiet until now, looks positively mortified. “ _Dominus,_ if I may, perhaps this can be solved indirectly. You have the coin and the political clout to send any number of troops. Why risk your life for a settlement that is for all purposes lost?” 

“Pretty wolf, this is more delicate than that,” Danarius says. “Tevinter values its leaders best when they are willing to put themselves in harm’s way. You know that. Alarming the peasant rebels with cavalry and armies is a fool’s game. No--we must take a more nuanced approach.” 

“So it shall be. Whatever your path, I will protect you.” 

“And of course you must,” Danarius says. But he looks troubled. “I do not wish for you to come to Seheron with me, Fenris. It is a dark and troubled place. If they see you, they will try to take you, and I will not describe what they would do. And yet--you  _must_  come.” 

 

“I will not forsake you,  _dominus,”_ Fenris says. “I would sooner die than allow them to capture me.”

  

“No, Fenris,” Danarius says, and there is genuine fear in his voice. “You are not allowed to die, nor be left behind. No matter where you are, or how far we are separated, I will  _always_ find a way back to you.” 

* 

“I have a gift for you,” Danarius says. “You will be entering your nineteenth year soon. Perhaps it is sentimental of me, but I wanted to…grant you a token of my affection, for you.”

You peak into the armory, where the master and his slave are alone together amidst the rows of polished steel. Fenris hangs onto Danarius’ every word, strangely at ease in the comfort of his company. 

Danarius puts his hand at the small of Fenris’ back--a gesture of intimacy not usually displayed--and guides him to a table, and to the dark, elegantly carved wooden box that rests there. 

“Open it,” Danarius whispers. 

Fenris does as he is told, and carefully unlatches it with a creak of wood. The gift is a sword, the blade long and hard, but with a fragility and brilliance usually reserved for more decorative weapons. Fenris’ hand trembles as he lifts it from the wood, and holds it up to glittering sunlight. 

“ _Lethendralis._ I commissioned it in Nevarra,” Danarius explains. “The design is elven, with some adjustments. The handle elaborate, but quite functional. It is made of silverite and steel alloy, and if you look closely, you can see lyrium shimmering in the blade. Yes, just there--like a pattern of stars.” He hesitates, for a moment. “Do you like it?” 

 

“Yes,  _dominus,_ ” Fenris breathes. “It is beautiful.” 

Danarius beams. “Inspired by my dearest possession, of course. Here--why don’t you try it out? I would very much like to see you wield it.” 

He steps aside, and Fenris’ green-gold gaze examines the sword more thoroughly, testing its weight and breadth as he shifts it from hand to hand. He takes a few swordsman’s steps, and then swings, cutting the air with a sharp whistle. The markings in his skin resonate with the lyrium, and you hear a familiar, low hum. 

The markings go dark. Fenris turns to his master. “It is a good sword. Thank you,  _dominus._ I shall think of you as I cut the enemies of the Imperium down.” 

“I am glad to hear that, little one,” Danarius says.

He runs his hands over him, as if afraid to lose him, and then presses him against the table, forcing his mouth over his. You want to look away. You cannot. 

“I own you in every way it is possible to own another and it will never be enough. If I could, I would fill you with every part of me, chain your soul to mine,” Danarius says against his lips. “Losing you would _destroy_ me.” 

“I know,” Fenris says, “and so you never will.”

 


End file.
